Nimmo: Three themes powering small-cap returns until 2024

Standard Life Investments's Harry Nimmo has pointed to three trends in 2014 that could continue a run of performance that has seen the manager return nearly 200% over five years.

Nimmo said a more intensive regulatory focus on banks, the end of the commodities supercycle and the "disruptive influence" of technology would all benefit smaller companies in the next year. "The level of regulatory scrutiny into the banking industry and their business practices is likely to continue at a high level and will lead to significant re-regulation as to how that industry conducts itself and indeed its very structure," the manager of the £1.2bn Standard Life UK Smaller Companies fund said. "Secondly, the mining supercycle of remorselessly rising raw material prices is drawi...