Rothschild’s RIT Earned Profit of More Than 30% From BTG Stake

RIT Capital Partners Plc, the U.K. investment trust led by Jacob Rothschild, said it earned a profit of more than 30 percent from the initial public offering of Brazil’s Banco BTG Pactual SA. (BBTG11)

Half of the stake in BTG “was made available at the time of the company’s IPO, at a profit in excess of 30 percent,” RIT said in its half-yearly statement today. It didn’t disclose further details.

The trust also said it’s “seeking out opportunities in the financial sector” following an investment in private-equity firm Corsair Capital in July. RIT said it increased its exposure to U.S. technology companies, as well as gold given central banks’ monetary loosening.

BTG, the Brazilian bank led by billionaire Andre Esteves, sold a stake of about 16 percent in December 2010 to a group of investors that included the Rothschild family and Italy’s Agnelli family, which controls automaker Fiat SpA. The investor group paid $1.55 billion, Fitch said in a report. BTG listed in Brazil earlier this year.

RIT had about 1.84 billion pounds of assets ($2.94 billion) as of Sept. 30, down from 1.92 billion pounds in March, it said in the statement. RIT said in March that Edmond de Rothschild Group would become a shareholder of the company.

“Across our public equity portfolio, we continue to seek investments that will be driven by fundamentals rather than government actions alone,” it said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ambereen Choudhury in London at achoudhury@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Edward Evans at eevans3@bloomberg.net