IN FOCUS: STANDARD CHARTERED ‘A GREAT BET FOR US’

Something we like the look of at the moment that others are cautious of is the multinational bank Standard Chartered.

The bank is exposed to some things that scare people – in particular Asian markets and credit growth in that part of the world. Every man and his dog is assuming the bank is about to be swept up in some sort of hurricane because of this, and that sentiment is reflected in the quite low share price.

But we see things differently. The bank has more spare cash than it has had in more than 40 years, so if things do go wrong we think it has a certain amount of protection, and we have the low valuation discount as well.

On the other hand, if the bank is able to weather certain challenges, as an investment it will simply do very well.

For us, this is a kind of “heads we win, tails we don’t lose too much” bet – a great position to be in and one our clients love. If we can make 40 investments like that, they will be very happy. That’s why Standard Chartered is attractive.

We have held it for a couple of years now; it is our 15th largest holding, representing around 3pc of the fund. The best would be mining company Anglo American. We took advantage when it was unpopular. We made more than 500pc on a stock that has been in the FTSE 100 for almost all its life.

Our worst was probably Trinity Mirror (now Reach), the newspaper group. It was the classic value trap. We liked its low price but in this case the naysayers were right. We all eat our own cooking as a matter of course, not because it sounds good but because it makes us money. An engineer – that’s what I trained in.