The endowment fund of Christ Church College, Oxford University has invested around £8.8mn into the shares of the Majedie investment trust.
The stake equates to 6.2 per cent of the shares of the investment trust, but is just a small fraction of the total of £770mn of assets held by the endowment as at 2022.
As the chart below shows, Majedie Investments has returned 43 per cent over the past three years, compared with 5 per cent for the average fund in its peer group.
The trust is managed by Marylebone Partners, a firm run by Daniel Higgins, whose background was as a fund of hedge funds manager.
All of Marylebone Partners other funds are Cayman Islands registered fund of funds, and so not available to UK advised clients.
Higgins said he wanted to run an investment trust which would be capable of investing in similar assets to those he picks for his other funds.
He began running the trust in January 2023.
The Majedie Investments trust currently invests 62 per cent of its capital in other funds, 18 per cent in shares listed on the stock exchange, 5 per cent in cash, and about 4 per cent in UK and US government bonds.
The other 11 per cent is in what Higgins terms “special investments”, which tend to be private equity holdings.
The largest shareholder in Majedie Investments is the aristocratic Barlow family. Disparate family members own around 50 per cent of the trust and are represented on the board of directors of the trust by Sir William Barlow.
Barlow said his aim is for the trust to grow above £500mn in size.
The Majedie Investments investment trust trades at a discount to its net asset value of 5.6 per cent.
david.thorpe@ft.com
