Threadneedle's Ison boosts financial stocks on eurozone recovery

Threadneedle's Dan Ison has backed the eurozone to continue to recover after adding 5.5% to European bank stocks in his £69m Pan European Accelerando fund.

Ison has bought Spanish bank Santander, and Italian bank Sanpaolo IMI, and has added to HSBC to reduce his 8.5% underweight in financials substantially.  His high conviction 30-stock portfolio now holds 18.7% in financials, versus the 21.7% weighting in the benchmark MSCI Europe Including UK index. Ison says: “We realised the underlying issues with the EU and bailout were going to get incrementally better over Q1. There is also a more constructive environment for the financials sector that is likely to be played out in 2011, particularly in relation to 2010.” Ison sold industrial s...