Brunner Investment Trust (BUT)

Established nearly a century ago, BUT is a long-standing, family-oriented investment company founded by Sir John Brunner, who reinvested the proceeds from selling his soda ash business to form the company. Primarily designed as a vehicle for wealth preservation across generations, the Brunner family retains a significant 28% stake in it. With assets exceeding £600 million, the trust has consistently grown its dividends for over 50 years. Managed with a global focus, its benchmark is 70% FTSE All-World and 30% FTSE All-Share, positioning it as a diversified global trust with a strong UK component. In the interview, Julian Bishop describes Brunner’s flexible investment philosophy, which focuses on balancing quality, growth, and value; how the trust seeks to find high-quality wealth compounders like Visa and niche value stocks like Brambles, a pallet-leasing company, and how many of its holdings benefit from unique network effects; and the challenges of macroeconomic prediction and why the managers take a bottom up approach with a focus on industry structures and how companies generate the cashflows that underpin long-term outperformance.