No one puffs as many fags as Mark Barnett. The manager of Edinburgh Investment Trust has £200 million in shares of British American Tobacco, Imperial Brands and Altria Group, the owner of Philip Morris, in his £1.6 billion portfolio. Tobacco is overwhelmingly his single biggest bet. No wonder he looks a bit green about the gills (Patrick Hosking writes).
Tobacco stocks have been hammered, most recently as the US Food and Drug Administration said it wanted to ban menthol cigarettes.
Perhaps fortunately for EIT, the latest lurch down in Big Tobacco came too late to be included in the investment trust’s results for the six months to September 30. As a result, it was able to report a solid 8.7 per cent increase in net