Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust has a reputation for being large, reliable and a little bit dull (although perhaps conservative would be fairer). Yet its history in recent years has been anything but dull.
The original F&C Asset Management, which was quoted and ran the fund, was one of the early targets of Edward Bramson, the American activist investor, who arrived at the start of the decade and succeeded in replacing some of the board with his own people. Mr Bramson stood down as chairman in 2013 and it was sold in 2014 to BMO Asset Management, part of the Bank of Montreal. This has made little difference to the management of the trust. In July of that year, Paul Niven took over the management