Direct Equity Team: A Note from Bishopsgate

ROTORK PLC: UPDATE 23 JULY 2026

“Improving decision quality is about increasing our chances of good outcomes, not guaranteeing them.” - Annie Duke

The DEP Team provide an update on Rotork Plc a UK industrial company added to the portfolio in May this year.

Having added Rotork Plc to the DEP portfolios on 28 May 2026, we were pleased to see that the Swiss industrial conglomerate ABB has made a takeover approach for Rotork last week. The takeover came at a significant premium to the share price, which in turn has led to a circa 55% gain in our holding in a period of just eight weeks. These types of short-term outcomes are not ones that we seek as investors, but it is always reassuring to have your work validated.

This year we have been telling clients that the combination of good quality companies and low valuations in the DEP Portfolio would likely lead to more corporate activity. We were pleased to see the table below from Bloomberg this week highlighting the number of large deals in the UK so far this year.

We have had exposure to three of these deals: Schroders, Intertek, and Rotork.  Additionally, we have exposure to the UK real estate sector, which has benefited from the takeover bid for Segro (the UK’s largest listed real estate company). We continue to believe there are further holdings in our portfolio that are attractive takeover targets. However, our assessment of these companies is never based upon this happening, it is simply a bonus.

Hence the quote we have used in this update - Annie Duke is a world champion poker player and her entire career has been about taking probabilistic risk. Investing is similar (but not identical). We want to maximise the probability of long-term success within the portfolio.

We continue to hold both Rotork and Intertek in the portfolio as both are still trading below the offer prices. We are evaluating several new UK companies to replace them currently and hope to update you when this work is complete.

This article was prepared by David Willcox, one of our Investment Managers.