Why we are aggressively underweight Europe

ON BONDS

Rathbone's Bryn Jones explains why he has no weighting in core and peripheral countries.

It would be easy for us to sit here and blag that the portfolio is fool-proof, and that we are not worried about what is happening in the peripheries – of course, we are, and it would be rather ignorant, not to mention stupid of us to plead otherwise. We have, however, been aggressive in underweighting the whole of Europe over the last six months, meaning we now have no weighting in core and peripheral European banks. The rationale behind our exiting peripheral banks is obvious – for core banks, we are worried about the counterparty risk. This has, to some extent, helped to buffer rec...