Mar 15, 2023 / NTS GMT
Unidentified Participant
To discuss Witan's annual results for 2022, I'm joined now by CEO, Andrew Bell.
Questions and Answers:
Unidentified ParticipantAndrew, 2022 was a really difficult year for financial markets. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, COVID, higher inflation. How did Witan perform?
Andrew Bell - Witan Investment Trust plc - CEO
As the cliche goes, it was a year of two halves. One of those halves lasted two months and the other lasted 10 months. And effectively the markets, at least from our point of view, bottomed out the week after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And during that period, Witan fell by 15%. We were 6% behind the market. Because the market was frankly shocked. This started the other concerns as well probably to be a post-COVID reopening, a bit of an improvement in economic growth. So it was an optimistic outlook for economies. And obviously, in the wake of both the rise in inflation intensified by the oil price rise following the invasion.
Those hopes were turned on their head. So everything