The impact of market volatility on the ability to meet drawdown payments should therefore be minimal.
Irrespective of warnings about using past performance as a guide, we believe that relative performance does have a persistence in private equity, which tends to bias our allocation towards the large well-known funds over newer, smaller products.
Jonathan Bell is chief investment officer at Stanhope Capital
KEY FIGURES
Nine
Number of direct private equity investment trusts in the Winterflood universe
137%
Weighted average share price performance of the direct private equity sector over three years
£11.6bn
Assets under management across the nine investment trusts, most of which comes from the £7bn 3i Group vehicle.
18.7%
Unweighted average discount of the direct sector, excluding3i, which operates on a 49.8% premium
