ITs wake up and smell the coffee

Following the split-cap debacle investment trusts have cleaned up their act, but trust directors and managers should not become complacent as this is just the start of a badly-needed overhaul

For too long the closed-ended investment company sector has been regarded as the embarrassing uncle snoring in the corner at a family party. Much of this is the industry's own fault. At one extreme we have the venerable but largely hapless global generalist trusts which underperformed for years on end. At the racier end, the split capital trusts, launched in their dozens in the late 1990s and early years of the Millennium, imploded in 2002 amid allegations of a self interested magic circle of managers supporting each others' trusts and lax corporate governance standards. The result in bot...