Crisis will lead to deeper economic and political integration

ON EUROPE

Baillie Gifford's Tom Coutts believes the bumpy road will end in a healthier Europe.

When investing in Europe, as anywhere else, we suspect a simple approach will be more profitable. That approach is to ignore the headlines, avoid the temptation to make macro-economic predictions, and focus one’s efforts on finding superior businesses, buying them cheaply, and holding them for a long time. Belgium provides a fine illustration of the benefits of this bottom-up approach: the country has not had a government for almost a year and there is a chance of it splitting along ethnolinguistic lines. However, what is the impact of this on companies like Colruyt, the Belgian supermar...