The Rothschild family has more cash invested in its own trust than any other manager or board member of an investment trust in the UK.
Data compiled by Investec, based on examinations of share registers, showed the Rothschild family had an investment of £702m in RIT, a trust founded by Lord Jacob Rothschild in 1961.
He was chairman of the £3.4bn multi-asset trust until retiring in September.
His daughter Hannah is a director of the trust which currently trades at a 10 per cent premium to its net assets.
In recent years, Lord Rothschild expressed concern about the health of the stock market, and in particular the impact of quantitative easing on stock markets. This caution has helped the fund's performance this year, with the trust having returned 13 per cent.
The fund managers who hold the largest personal stake in an investment trust they actively manage are the trio who run Pershing Square Holdings, who have a combined stake of £668m.
The next largest manager stake is in Tetragon, with the trust's three managers having a combined holding of £256m.
This is followed by Apex Global Alpha, whose managers own £195m worth of shares in the company.
The largest investment trust on the UK market is Scottish Mortgage, which has assets of £8.4bn.
The joint managers are James Anderson and Tom Slater, who have a combined stake in the trust of £85.9m. This is the eighth largest holding by a management team, according to Investec.
Well known managers Nick Train and Michael Lindsell also have personal investments in the two investment trusts they run.
They have a combined £28.4m in the Lindsell Train investment trust, which they co-manage, while Mr Train has a £23.7m stake in the Finsbury Growth and Income trust, of which he is co-manager.
The holding the managers have in the Lindsell Train investment trust represents the tenth largest investment by a management team in a trust they own.
The Smithson investment trust, which was the largest investment trust launch in history when it launched in October 2018 with £822m, also attracted a significant amount from people close to it.
Terry Smith, the chief investment officer of Fundsmith, the company that manages the trust, and his management team have £34.5m in the trust.
Mr Smith and colleagues also have £10m invested in the other investment trust they launched, Fundsmith Emerging Equity.
The holding of the management team of Smithson is the eleventh largest investment by a management team.
The second largest investment trust launch in history was Neil Woodford’s Patient Capital, which raised £800m at lunch in 2015.
Mr Woodford sold £1m worth of his shares in the trust in July, citing the need to pay a tax bill as the reason.
That £1m equated to 1.75m shares, and left the manager with a holding of 1.25m shares.
At the current 35p share price, that equates to a holding of about £440,000, though the fund manager may have bought the shares at a higher price.
Alan Brierley, who leads the investment trust research team at Investec, said: "Neil Woodford never disclosed his investment in WPCT, but on 29 July the company announced he had sold 1.75m shares at the beginning of July, leaving a holding of 1.25m.
"We do not know when this investment was made but while an investment of 3m shares is not an insignificant number, to put this into some sort of context, it would appear that Neil Woodford received a dividend of £24m from Woodford Investment Management in the financial year ending 31 March 2018, the latest accounts on file.”
Mr Woodford has never received a fee for managing the Patient Capital trust, so none of the £24m dividend came from that source.
Mr Woodford is being replaced as manager of Patient Capital in the coming months, following an extended period of poor performance.
Woodford Investment Management declined to comment.
david.thorpe@ft.com
