Industrials drive BlackRock Greater Europe to relative outperformance

The managers of the £187m BlackRock Greater Europe investment trust have significantly outperformed their benchmark thanks to an overweight to industrials and an underweight to financials.

The NAV of Vincent Devlin and Sam Vecht’s portfolio rose 10.6% over the 12 months to 31 August, compared to a fall of 0.2% by the FTSE World Europe ex UK index. “Holdings within the industrial sector provided the strongest performance, as the company maintained a higher weighting to the sector relative to the index, and notably from holdings within transportation,” the managers said. Stocks in the trust include Swiss logistics company Kuehne + Nagel and Dutch oil and chemicals storage company Vopak. However, Devlin and Vecht have recently taken profits on their holdings within the ...