RIT Capital Partners – April 2026 Update

• The trust is widely diversified and provides access to many investments that are unavailable to individual retail investors

• The trust’s focus is to generate long-term capital growth

• There has been a lot of change in the people managing the trust in recent years

How it fits in a portfolio

RIT Capital Partners aims to deliver long-term growth. The trust's managers do this by investing in a range of assets, such as individual company shares, private investments, share and bond funds, real assets, including property and gold, currencies, and absolute return funds.

The diversified approach has potential to provide some shelter to investors' capital when stock markets are weaker. But the focus is that all investments in the trust provide long-term capital growth.

The trust could add diversification to a portfolio focused on growth or to increase the growth potential of a conservatively invested portfolio. It also offers access to many investments that retail clients are unable to invest in directly.

Investors in closed-ended funds should be aware the trust can trade at a discount or premium to Net Asset Value (NAV).

Manager

RIT Capital Partners launched in 1988 and is managed by J. Rothschild Capital Management (JRCM), making it one of the few self-managed trusts in the sector. It’s made up of two committees and an experienced investment department to ensure everything runs as efficiently as possible.

Maggie Fanari, CEO of JRCM, is responsible for looking after the trust’s day-to-day management. Fanari was previously Senior Managing Director and Global Group Head of High Conviction Equities at the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.

She is supported by a team of 15 investors, with varying areas of specialism such as picking individual stocks, structuring private asset investments, fund selection and trading.

They meet on a weekly basis to discuss the suitability of the recommendations and make final decisions on what the trust invests in and its overall level of risk.

There’s been a lot of change to JRCM’s leadership team over the last couple of years. While some of the individuals who are in new roles have worked at the company for a number of years, the management team today is very different to the one that was in place for many years leading up to 2024.

The new team is committed to running the trust in a similar way as their predecessors. Fanari was a non-executive director on the Board of RIT Capital Partners from 2019 and can therefore ensure consistency of the investment approach. However, it’s natural that different people will make different decisions.

We think that Fanari now has the team in place that she wants to take the trust forward over the coming years and we don’t expect to see much further change from here.

Process

The investment team use a three-pillar framework to manage the trust. This approach helps the team to ensure diversification, and helps investors understand where their money is invested.

The first pillar is ‘Quoted Equities’, which are shares traded on the stock market. The amount invested in this pillar is expected to be between 30-60% of the trust over time. It’ll change depending on the economic picture. This pillar is made up of directly owned shares that the team think have long-term growth prospects, as well as some investment funds for certain areas of the global stock market which require particular expertise. Examples of the areas where the team uses funds are the Japanese and Chinese stock markets, where they believe local knowledge is beneficial to long-term returns.

The second pillar is ‘Private Investments’, which are investments that aren’t traded on the stock market. Similar to the ‘Quoted Equities’ pillar, the team invest in some private assets directly and others through investment funds managed by specialists. These investments tend to be more difficult to buy and sell than listed shares, making them higher risk. It’s expected that 20-40% of the trust will be invested in these assets.

The third pillar is ‘Uncorrelated Strategies’. This is made up of investments that the team think will perform differently to shares and potentially offer some shelter during periods of stock market falls. Again, the team invest in some things directly and make use of specialist external fund managers. It’s expected that this part of the trust will make up 20-40% over time.

The ranges for these pillars are quite broad, which gives the managers plenty of scope to alter how the trust is invested to reflect their views of the global economic and market outlook.

At the end of December 2025, there was 43% allocated to the Quoted Equities pillar, with 16% invested in shares directly and 27% in funds. This is lower than the end of 2024, where the total was 46%, split 24% in direct shares and 22% in funds.

The amount invested in the Private Investments pillar fell over 2025 from 33% to 32%. The trust had 10% invested directly and 22% invested via funds at the end of 2025. This follows comments from the chair of the board in 2023 about a plan to reduce the amount invested in Private Investments to 25-33% of the trust within two years. We view this positively, highlighting the team’s ability to realise value from their book of private assets.

The trust had 26% invested in Uncorrelated Strategies at the end of 2025. This is an increase from 24% at the end of 2024. Most of this increase came from investing more in government bonds.

The trust makes use of gearing (borrowing to invest) and derivatives, which can magnify any gains or losses. Investors should be aware that if used, each one increases risk. The amount of gearing has decreased during 2025, from 8.9% at the start to 3.2% at the end.

The trust invests in emerging markets, high yield bonds and smaller companies, all of which add risk.

Culture

The driving culture at RIT is its long-term focus, and alignment with shareholder interests. A key factor in how they achieve this is through the long-term investment by the Rothschild family. This type of generational interest has been integrated throughout RIT’s culture and has encouraged shareholders to hold the trust across their own generations, sharing the long-term view.

ESG Integration

In recent years, Environmental, Social and Governance factors (ESG) have been an increasing focus for RIT. In February 2021, JRCM became a signatory to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) and submitted their first report during 2023. The 2023 report and accounts included the trust’s first Sustainability Report, which is updated annually. The latest accounts show that the ESG policy was further updated at the start of 2026 and includes information about the managers’ voting policy. We think these are positive steps and are pleased to see progress made in this area but for the avoidance of doubt this trust is not managed to a sustainable mandate.

Cost

The ongoing charges figure over the trust's financial year to 31 December 2025 was 0.73%. Investors should refer to the latest annual reports and accounts and Key Information Document for details of the risks and charging structure.

We recently made some changes to the amount clients pay to invest with us. Find out more about these changes.

The annual charge to hold investment trusts in the HL ISA, SIPP or Fund & Share Account is 0.35% (capped at £150 p.a. in each account) and 0.25% in the HL Lifetime ISA (capped at £45 p.a.). There are no charges from HL to hold investment trusts within the HL Junior ISA. As investment trusts trade like shares, both a buy and sell instruction will be subject to the HL share dealing charges.

Performance

RIT Capital Partners has a strong long-term track record. It's outperformed both its benchmarks over the long run, though over the past 10 years to the end of March 2026, the trust’s share price has returned 52.72%*, lagging the UK Consumer Prices Index (CPI) +3% which returned 85.70%. The trust has also lagged global equity markets over this period. The trust’s net asset value (NAV) has performed better over the last 10 years, returning 128.92%. Remember that investment trusts can trade at a premium or discount to NAV. Past performance isn’t a guide to future returns.

Over the 12 months to the end of December 2025, the trust’s reporting period, the trust’s share price rose 16.86%. This is ahead of UK CPI +3%, which rose 6.36%. The NAV return over the same period was 13.52%.

All three pillars helped performance in 2025. The largest contributor was the Quoted Equities pillar. Particular highlights were investments in funds specialising in companies within the biotech sector, as well as managers focused on Japanese and Chinese companies. The managers reduced investments in the US significantly earlier in 2025 and replaced these with investments in Europe and Asia, which also benefited performance.

Private Investments also added to performance, with their direct investments performing strongly, including an investment in SpaceX.

Uncorrelated Strategies added value too, but to a lesser extent. That’s expected, given the diversification and downside protection benefits that these investments provide.

The discount to NAV began 2025 at -24.0% and reduced to -22.3% by the end of the year. Over the 12 months to 17 April 2026, the average discount for the trust was -26.83% which compares to an average discount of -8.68% over the last 10 years.