The Split Capital Investment Trust Crisis

Paper Summary:

This paper examines the structure of the barbell trusts, believed to be one of the main causes of the capital investment trust crisis 2001 - 2002. It looks at how the demand by investors seeking high annual returns in today?s almost inflation free economy was successfully being met with barbell investment trusts in a period of buoyant stock markets and how the years 2001 and 2002 saw a fall in stock markets which these barbells could not handle. It shows how these investment trusts were structurally flawed, geared only to a bull market and were seeping in complex risk that very few really understood.

From the Paper:

"Falling markets and the forced selling of shares by banks, in an illiquid market lead to disproportionate share price drops. The asset base of these funds was being eaten away at. Consequently, an even higher yield was now required to meet dividends as there was less capital to work with. Analysts had warned that barbells were offering unrealistic high headline dividend yields. Barbell trusts found they could not meet the headline dividend yields that they had offered. Most barbells hadn't been in operation long enough to build up revenue reserves. As a result, a few barbells failed to meet their dividends and dividends had to be cut. However a dividend cut by one trust did not solely affect that trust."

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