If you are rich, your main concern is probably to preserve your fortune rather than to worry about making more. That surely is the view of the Rothschild family, who created an investment trust in the 1970s to manage their wealth.
That business is now RIT Capital Partners and remains central to the family’s interests — they own a fifth of its shares — but while the trust has been a good custodian of the Rothschild money, what about other investors seeking to boost their smaller nest eggs?
RIT Capital Partners has been managed for caution. Its exposure to quoted shares was only 44 per cent last year, well below its long-term average, while 7 per cent was in real assets such as gold.
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