Personal Assets Trust

Investment decisions are made by co-managers Sebastian Lyon and Charlotte Yonge. Lyon founded the trust's investment manager, Troy Asset Management, in 2000 after managing the GEC Pension Fund's equity portfolio and asset allocation. Yonge joined Troy in 2013 from Ruffer Investment Management and serves alongside Lyon on both Personal Assets Trust and the Trojan Fund.

The trust's asset allocation is driven by a top-down reading of macroeconomic risk rather than relative-value screens. The equity sleeve selects high-quality, durable companies, while the trust also holds physical gold bullion, inflation-linked bonds, and government debt. The April 2026 factsheet highlighted the Japanese yen as a diversifier and the accelerating AI capital-expenditure cycle as a macro input, confirming that currency and sectoral themes feed directly into the portfolio construction process.

It is a closed-ended UK investment trust, meaning shares trade on the London Stock Exchange and the managers are never forced to sell assets to meet redemptions. The trust outsources investment management to Troy Asset Management and company secretarial duties to Juniper Partners in Edinburgh.

Physical gold bullion is a permanent holding and represents the trust's most explicit hedge against currency debasement and tail-risk events. The trust holds the metal in a London vault rather than through derivatives or ETFs, keeping the position separate from the counterparty risk embedded in synthetic gold exposures.

The board is chaired by Iain Ferguson CBE and includes Independent Non-Executive Director Mandy Clements. Sharon Brown was appointed Chair of the Audit Committee in 2025. The trust follows the AIC Code of Corporate Governance through its membership in the Association of Investment Companies.

Senior Fund Manager Charlotte Yonge co-founded GAIN (Girls Are INvestors), a charity that encourages more young women to enter investment management in the UK. The trust itself also sponsors the Personal Assets Foundation, though details of grant-making and governance separation are not publicly detailed on the main website.

The trust does not participate in private-company club deals or co-investment syndicates. It transacts exclusively through publicly listed equities, government bonds, corporate bonds, cash, and physical gold bullion, keeping its entire strategy liquid and transparent to daily pricing.