IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/bushst/v63y2021i5p826-849.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The rise of professional asset management: The UK investment trust network before World War I

Author

Listed:
  • Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos
  • Janette Rutterford
  • Carry van Lieshout

Abstract

This article analyses the network of UK closed-end investment trust companies, the early pioneers of diversification before World War I, compiling data from different original sources with regard to their directors’ backgrounds and their characteristics as listed companies. Our results reveal that the majority of these early asset managers were merchants, bankers, lawyers, or accountants. The structure of the network is centralised around a few firms with high board sizes and a few directors with many interlocking directorships within the sector. This is a purely structural effect and cannot be explained by individual firm or director characteristics. Our results also show that investment trusts could not be grouped according to their performance. This means that interlocking directorships were equally possible between good and weak performing investment trusts, suggesting that successful asset management was due to team work and was an outcome of collective decision making at board level.

Suggested Citation

  • Dimitris P. Sotiropoulos & Janette Rutterford & Carry van Lieshout, 2021. "The rise of professional asset management: The UK investment trust network before World War I," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 63(5), pages 826-849, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:63:y:2021:i:5:p:826-849
    DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2019.1656197
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00076791.2019.1656197
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00076791.2019.1656197?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David A Bogle & Christopher Coyle & John D Turner, 2022. "Capital market development over the long run: the portfolios of UK life assurers over two centuries [Corporate ownership and control in Victorian Britain]," European Review of Economic History, European Historical Economics Society, vol. 26(3), pages 370-398.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:bushst:v:63:y:2021:i:5:p:826-849. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FBSH20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.