The surprising reality of Europe's hard numbers

Schroders' Nick Kirrage, co-manager of the £1.1bn Income fund, looks beyond the headlines in troubled Europe and finds some surprises in the region's hard numbers.

Investing for the long-term has a good deal to commend it, but it can make it tricky to find something new and interesting to say when it comes to writing the quarterly review for our investors. This time around, however, I did get the easier, purely factual job of highlighting the more high profile events of the preceding three months. The first thing that struck me as I did so should surprise no-one. Every notable event has been macroeconomic – the latest programmes of quantitative easing (QE) in the US and Japan, another eurozone acronym in ‘OMT’ (outright monetary transactions) in...