Rufus Darwall, son of European Opportunities Trust (EOT) fund manager Alexander Darwall, has increased his holding in the investment trust to 7.6% from 3.1%, a stock exchange filing shows.
That leaves Darwall junior with a £32.8m stake in the £432m closed-end fund, an increase of £19.4m on the £13.4m position he previously held.
That’s not bad for a paralegal and trainee solicitor who, according to his LinkedIn profile, did an internship at Hipgnosis Song Management four years ago.
The stock market notice shows Rufus holds 3.58m voting rights in the trust, up from 1.96m, which could provide useful support for the company in next year’s continuation vote.
Father and son now hold 11.6% of the former top-performing trust that has fallen on hard times and has had to offer shareholders two 25% tender offers this year and last, letting them sell at a narrow 2% discount.
On the same day as Rufus upped his stake, his father reduced his position to 4.07% from 6.74%, leaving him with £17.5m in a trust he has managed since launch in 2000. That is an £11.6m reduction from the £29.1m he previously held.
A stock exchange notice in 2013 shows Darwall’s daughters Zara and Cecilia also held small positions in the trust.
Saba Capital, the activist hedge fund that pushed for a 50% tender offer two years ago, retained a 4.7% holding earlier this year.
More influential on the company’s future will be the two US value investors Allspring and 1607 Capital Partners which own 20% of the shares in total, though both have reduced their positions recently.
European Opportunities has badly underperformed in the past five years, delivering a total underlying investment return of 37.5% versus the 68.2% return from the MSCI Europe index. Partly weighed down by the slump in the shares of its former top holding in Danish drugs giant Novo Nordisk, the trust has seen its 13% growth in net asset value continue to lag the 15.9% rise in the benchmark.
However, the shares have done better, rallying 18.1% and narrowing their gap to the trust’s net asset value (NAV) to 8.5% from an average one-year discount of 10%.
While European Opportunities has fallen a long way behind sector leader JPMorgan European Growth & Income (JEGI), which has generated a 93% increase in NAV over five years, it is not the worst performer in its peer group. That wooden spoon goes to Baillie Gifford European Growth (BGEU) which is down 3.5% over five years after suffering an even bigger reversal to its investment strategy.
