IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/fihrev/v16y2009i02p157-181_99.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Learning from one another's mistakes: investment trusts in the UK and the US, 1868–1940

Author

Listed:
  • Rutterford, Janette

Abstract

This article explores the development of the closed-end investment trust in both the UK and the US, in the context of the investment management strategies adopted and whether they provided value-added services for investors. Although US investment trusts of the 1920s boom years were heavily influenced by their earlier UK counterparts, they differed from British investment trusts in a number of key ways, in particular, size, capital structure, tax and accounting practices, management, and costs. These differences led to their relatively much worse performance in the stock market crash of the late 1920s and early 1930s. This poor US trust performance led directly to the creation of the US open-ended ‘fixed trust’, marketed as an antidote to the generally poor management of conventional closed-end investment trusts. As confidence in mutual funds slowly returned in the United States, open-ended funds were gradually given more flexibility, but US investment trust companies, with share prices at a steep discount to liquidation value, and partly blamed for the crash, were encouraged to convert to mutual fund status by the 1936 Revenue Act. By 1944, open-end funds had overtaken investment trusts in terms of asset size, a phenomenon that did not occur in Britain for another 30 years.

Suggested Citation

  • Rutterford, Janette, 2009. "Learning from one another's mistakes: investment trusts in the UK and the US, 1868–1940," Financial History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(2), pages 157-181, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:fihrev:v:16:y:2009:i:02:p:157-181_99
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0968565009990060/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Marcuzzo, Maria Cristina & Sanfilippo, Eleonora, 2022. "Keynes's personal investments in the London Stock Exchange and his views on the transformation of the British economy," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 512-526.
    2. Chambers, David & Esteves, Rui, 2014. "The first global emerging markets investor: Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust 1880–1913," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 1-21.
    3. Annaert, Jan & Verdickt, Gertjan, 2021. "Go active or stay passive: Investment trust, financial innovation and diversification in Belgium's early days," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).

    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:cup:fihrev:v:16:y:2009:i:02:p:157-181_99. 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: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/fhr .

    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.