After just a year and a half at the helm, Baillie Gifford's Charles Plowden has turned his £1.3bn Monks Investment Trust into one of the best performers in the AIC Global sector thanks to a number of changes he has implemented, including the use of gearing.
Plowden (pictured), who has run the trust with the support of his Global Alpha team since March 2015, has revamped the underperforming vehicle to help push it into second place in its sector over one year. After taking over, the manager made a number of changes to the portfolio, investment approach, marketing style and attitude towards gearing. The £1.3bn trust was formerly led in a cautious style by Baillie Gifford's Gerald Smith which Plowden said "in hindsight, was probably wrong". The trust underperformed its sector significantly in 2011, 2012 and 2014, but began to outperform ...
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