Hugh Young's ten golden rules of equity investing

Hugh Young is managing director of Aberdeen Asset Management Asia, as well as group head of equities and manager of several of Aberdeen's most popular and best performing funds. Here are ten of his golden rules for successful stockpicking, developed over 25 years as a professional investor.

1 Treatment of minority shareholders When considering a company, the first question you need answered is ‘who controls it?’ The second is ‘do you trust them?’ Minority shareholders are just one of many company stakeholder groups (others include employees, the government, suppliers, bankers and major shareholders such as a founding family). While you should not, as a minority shareholder, expect priority over the other stakeholders, you should expect to be treated fairly. And this depends on whether you can trust whoever controls the company to act in a fair manner. The controlling part...