So I'm going to talk about Bankers Investment Trust. I'll give you a quick overview of who we are, how we invest, I suppose, and then talk about some of the investment themes and positions we've got within the trust, and then finish up with something that's really key to me, the dividend history. I'm a big believer in income and the returns therein. So, say, 20 minutes or so, 19 and a half and clicking by. Quick introduction to myself, I suppose. My background: I started investing in markets as an analyst, an analyst covering the American market in 1990, and then I sort of transitioned into running sort of global money, initially managing assets also in Asia, and then in Europe, and finally I've sort of ticked Japan off as well. So I've pretty much bought stocks and invested in companies in all parts of the world.
And I work for a company called Janus Henderson. We have the investment management contract for Bankers. We've had that since the early 70s, so a very long connection with this trust. And we were originally a British company, launched in the 30s or so, but we merged with an American firm a few years back and we listed on the New York Stock Exchange. So we're a big, a big investment house with a lot of resources to throw at analyzing companies and markets.
But let's touch on Bankers then. You know, some of the headlines, I suppose. You know, I suppose it goes without saying we don't just invest in banks. Somebody asked me earlier, you know, how long's this fund been going, and the answer is, not being flippant, but 136 years. So this trust was launched in 1888, and it got its name because of its launch, I suppose. It was launched by a bank, Williams and Clint, back then, but really to democratize investment for smaller investors, and I'm really pleased we're still doing that. So for 7p a share price, you get a selection of global equities around the world.
And our objective really is to grow our capital, so that's the net asset value, the amount of assets we manage, so growing the investments in that sense, but also to grow the dividend above inflation. So we're trying to deliver a real return, obviously hopefully a real return of both capital and income, so growing that above inflation over the long term. So again, a really suitable, I think, vehicle for long-term investors. We're a billion, nearly a billion and a half of assets, so huge, you know, very significant investment trust in its own scale there. And really, you know, I think, you know, I've been managing it since 2003, so just over 20 years now, and my predecessor was manager from 1977.
So again, another great aspect, I think, of investment trusts is the continuity of the investment people running it and therefore the style, how it's investing. So again, when you're matching, wanting something for the long term, you know, I think these investment trusts often do give you that. And then finally, we do have a dividend yield, it's two and a half or 2.4, so it's not the largest, but again, you'll see later how we've significantly grown that over time. So you sacrifice a bit of high yield for strong growth, I think, and we pay that quarterly.
So let's look at some of our core principles, really. I've mentioned some of these before. So twin objectives: growing capital and income. And again, I think over the long term, the last few years markets have been all about capital, about the share price growth. I think forgotten a little bit dividends, but in my mind it'll come back, it always does. And over the long term, dividend-paying stocks, you know, do feed into decent growth. We're very much focused, I'll show you the team in a minute, but really, you know, trying to focus the portfolio into our best ideas. So we own roughly 100 stocks, 100 investments around the world. I'm trying to back our best ideas in different markets.
And we do have exposure everywhere. Obviously, the US, America is the largest stock market in the world. Unsurprisingly, it's the largest proportion of our assets. But we've got investment directly in the Indian market, we've got them in the Chinese market, places like Mexico, and across the world. So, you know, we really do have that global reach, I think. And all importantly to me, we have the flexibility to shift a little bit between sort of what we call value and growth investing. So some of the stocks, particularly in the US, we own for more growth. That's where you see the technology names. But in other markets, we can shift a little more into value.
I find Asia, parts of Europe actually, you get better returns by focusing a little bit more on where the cheaper value are, where they're unloved, and where opportunities come about to see share prices appreciate. And then finally, costs are hugely important. I'm sure I'm preaching the converted here. And so, you know, investment trusts do tend to have lower fees. Our management fee is about 0.4%, and then, you know, some extra fees, auditors' fees, etc. So 0.5% is our management fee added in there.
We also have low cost of debt. So again, we won't probably touch too much on that, but our cost of borrowing, investment trusts can borrow some money, and our borrowing cost is about 2.7%, and that runs out into 2045. So again, a great advantage to add and supplement to returns.
So the team itself, I say I've been managing it since 2003. Alongside me, I've managed most of the portfolio, but I've got some specialists in each of their markets. And what I love about them is they all pretty much sit in their location, so they really are embedded in the markets they invest in, much more local knowledge. So Jeremiah runs our US portfolio out of Denver. We've got sort of 45 analysts just covering the US market based in Denver, and a number of very experienced managers. Jeremiah's been at it for 25 years. Jamie sits in London here but covers all the European and the UK markets. Janichi is in Tokyo and Stix is in Singapore.
So again, you know, I think that depth of their own markets, understanding of local markets, is important. And each of them is trying to manage a selection of sort of 20, 25 stocks, as we put there, you know, in each area. And so we've got enough focus, I think, to have some interesting ideas, but not to spread it too widely. We're backing our best ideas.
And you see from the portfolio here, again, sorry if you're at the back, it's a bit more difficult to read, but, you know, the US portion is, this is actually the end of September, was about 46%. We actually, you know, as Trump, love him or hate him, very pro-business, you know, the US market to our mind was likely to sort of bounce, you know, on his election. So as soon as that became reasonably clear, we did move some more assets into America. So at the end of October, if you've got the fact sheet, I think we're 50%, and we're about 56% in North America as of today, you know, with a bit of extra performance coming.
The UK, sadly, part of global markets, is actually a small component these days. So we're 7%. We own about six names in Europe, but also bigger exposure within European markets and then Asia, Japan to add to that.
From a sector point of view, I think, you know, not focusing maybe on a few ideas, few areas where we're different from the index. Again, we're active investors, we're trying to pick those names and not just match the index. I think key ones to me are financials, where we are sort of overweight the index there. We feel interest rates are likely to stay higher for longer, which should really benefit banks, I think, in this environment. And then something like industrials as well, where we see actually recovery coming, particularly in Asia. Some more announcements today about the Chinese really backing their economy very hard. So we own some assets there, but also America is doing the same. So industrials, you know, struggling in Europe but performing very well in other markets.
And then something like consumer discretionary. Consumers do have enough money, I think, to spend, but they're spending it in different ways to how they used to. So, you know, key stocks we'd point out, something like Amazon is a big holding for us. You know, very difficult to replicate that, but it's driving still a lot of consumer spending to Amazon and away from the high street. So those trends we see really continuing as they grow out into new markets and expand. So that's consumer discretionary, where we see some great opportunities.
But let's go back a little bit about how we invest and what sort of, you know, what are you getting when you invest in Bankers in terms of investment process and style. And I've sort of got a long, long-term chart. This goes back to sort of '88, '89 when I started. And, you know, when I started, this is global 10-year government bond yields, and they were sort of 8, 9% back then. I'm sure you're far too young to remember when we hit 15% in the UK, but we did in that period.
So, you know, companies that are borrowing money, the shares we invest in, you know, we're borrowing at sort of 10% plus in that time, and we've just had a 20, 30 years sort of almost glide down to almost zero just before COVID, really, or through the COVID environment. So we're down here and we hit zero, but we've had a very material reset where government 10-year bonds now are sort of between 4 and 5%. So companies are borrowing now at 5, 6, 7%, and to my mind, that's a major reset.
You know, and therefore what worked in this period, I think, is not going to work in the next sort of five or six years in the same way. And so, you know, companies and businesses and investment styles that really benefited from low cost of financing, and I'm looking at things like private equity, you know, some of the corporates and utilities and property and other areas, you know, we're just going to find the business model is different. They're not going to fail, but they've just got to find different opportunities, and the returns are probably not as high as they were.
So this really is focusing our minds on what companies do we want to own going forward, and our mind is to own cash-generative companies. So many of you maybe, I mean, read annual accounts and understand a bit about accounting. You know, I think to my mind, earnings, book value, all these measures that we talk about, we look at value and evaluations can be very heavily manipulated in the accounting sense. But to my mind, cash is one of the purest things. It's cash in the bank account. A pound in the bank is a pound in the bank.
You need to understand, did that business borrow more, so, you know, more cash in the bank account? Have they sold things to inflate that? But it's also what the business is generating after costs. So what's its cash generation? You know, those that have looked to history, you know, Benjamin Graham was all about this, cash generation, and I think it got a bit lost in the last decade. But in my mind, it'll come back because the cost of funding businesses is so much higher than it used to be.
And therefore businesses that generate cash can pay down debt, can borrow more, but critically, to my mind, can invest in their businesses, capex, which is really the lifeblood of the future of the business. So this is what we're all about, trying to buy cash-generative companies, not trying to overpay, so to make sure we've got some element of value, but looking really at those sort of businesses.
So where are we finding opportunities? Let's talk about a theme here, electrification. You know, and I think what we've been very fascinated here is this is a graph on the left looking at the US market and the amount of power in the US economy and the demand for that power. And you can see the green lines are really the last few years' historical levels, and actually the power demand for the US market has not grown in the last sort of 15 years.
And the reason there is more about efficiency, I think, than anything else. So LED light bulbs, etc., etc. You know, the amount of power, although the economy is growing, houses have a growing number of households, the amount of power has not grown, but it's forecast to accelerate very dramatically. So 40% growth in US power demand, and that's happening everywhere else. It's happening here, it's happening in Europe, and the key really is electrification of the household, cars instead of filling up, you're electrifying your car.
And then also on top of that, things like data centers, you may have read about, which is again huge, huge growth. I was reading today about a new project in Georgia in America, 600 acres. I mean, that's a data center. I mean, a building that's 600 acres is very difficult to comprehend, but that one data center was going to consume the same amount of electricity as one million homes. And, you know, the spending is off the scale.
So to my mind, what's been, I think, a bit left behind is the electrification, the investment in grids, national grids, moving that power. You know, it might be solar, it might be wind. We see that in this country, all the wind generation's in Scotland and most of us live in the south. You know, you need to move this stuff around. And again, I don't know if you saw last week, but, you know, we were notified a billion pounds' worth of electricity was just bled last year because it wasn't able to connect and move into where the population needs it.
So there's huge investment to come in here, and we own companies in India, we own companies in China that are all making the equipment, but deploying it as well, things like National Grid, you may know in the UK, but there are other businesses like that, Power Grid in India doing this. So again, I think, you know, not overly priced, but a lot of growth.
The next area is innovation in healthcare, and again, the market's very fixated with artificial intelligence. This is a huge area, I think, healthcare that's going to benefit from artificial intelligence, particularly in the development of new drugs. The graph, again, we won't labour too much, but the graph on the right is just showing the number of new compounds being developed, and what's great about AI is both the way to deploy models, but also to test drugs, to model them, and to change compounds is so impressive.
But to me, one of the big investment themes we've got is obesity and solving, which I think is really the number one health issue in the world, which is obesity. And we've got the new drugs, the GLP-1 drugs, which basically suppress your appetite, and they have amazing development there and amazing opportunities. And the market's forecast to grow from about $1 billion of revenue today to $80 billion of revenue by 2030.
And to say it's a global issue, we own Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, which are the two drug companies with the best drugs in this space, and I just see huge growth in terms of revenues and supported by governments, I think, particularly there. So I think that's a great area. Again, not really overpriced. The drug companies have not been a great investment the last year or so, and I think there's some great opportunities that we own in that space.
And then finally, sort of picking a market, again, a bit unloved, but actually the story is improving. Many of you may be invested in Japan recently. What I love about this market is it is one of the few ones that actually inflation is really desperately required. So, you know, decades of deflation, mismanagement, it really is changing dramatically here. So when I meet Japanese companies, they're really intent on trying to be as good and as efficient as US companies.
So we define that by something called return on equity, so the amount of profit you make on the equity base, the amount of assets you own, and they really run at basically half the rate of US companies. It's a huge catch-up, and that's coming. We're seeing, I've got a graph here of, you know, sloping upwards wonderfully, but it's essentially telling you that the earnings of Japanese companies have grown over the last 10 years by about 7% per annum, but the dividends have grown by 9%.
And the buybacks, so the amount of cash coming back to us, retiring equity, is about 17% annualized growth. So Japanese companies, in my mind, are getting it. They're understanding about being more efficient and returning that cash to investors to reinvest in the market. So a lot of what's been going on in the US market and helping that market with this cash, you know, recycling and buying more, is going to happen and is happening in Japan. So I think great opportunities there.
So I'm sort of moving rapidly to give you a bit of a flavor. The top 10 holdings are here, but they're on the fact sheet, they're on the website, etc. Lots of US names, as you'd expect. I said it's our biggest market. We're getting great growth from these names, though. American Express, probably our best performing stock last year, up 12%, dividend growth there. Some of the tech names, KLA, Broadcom, make, you know, a part of this semiconductor sort of space, again, growing dividends very strongly.
And then outside the top 10, you have some European and other names. Compass Group, we own, for instance. Siemens, again, that electrification there. National Grid is in our top 20, etc. So, you know, very wide and global list of stocks.
Finally, I want to touch a little bit on dividends, which is, there we go. Bankers' dividend, we've got a great history with the second longest history of dividend growth in the sector, in the investment trust sector. So the company, we've grown the dividend every year since 1966, when actually they held the dividend. If you, I've been back pre-war and I can't find a dividend cut. So again, a huge investment record there, and we're very proud of this.
And I think, again, you know, for those that hold it over 10, 20 years, the compounding effect of growing quicker than inflation, that's us on the left, the dark line, you know, and inflation is bubbling along the bottom. So 10 years, dividend up 80%, inflation up 35%. And then finally on the right, you just get, you know, this is inflation, the rolling 10 years, two times, rolling three times. We, our dividend really sort of, we used to grow at about three times inflation, we're growing around about twice now. So again, the compounding effect of that, I think, really makes a nice return over the long term.
I must finish on discounts. Again, one of the great, I think it's a beneficiary of investment trusts is discounts. They widen out. Again, for those that don't know investment trusts very well, we're listed on the stock exchange. So through your AJ Bell account, you can buy shares, individual shares on the stock exchange. But those shares are priced on demand, I suppose, buyers and sellers a little bit more. The underlying, that is the net asset value, the amount of assets that we, my job is to grow that asset pool.
And you can see sort of four or five years ago we were on a premium or trading roundabout asset value, so 0% premium discount, and we've slipped away to about a 10 today. It's about 10, 11% discount. What I think is great here is you're basically, by buying at a 12% discount, you're buying a pound's worth of assets for 90p. You don't often get those sort of advantages.
And if we can get it back, attract some new investors, and hopefully get back to premium, then that discount should close, and you get a 10 or 12% return on top of the return of the assets. So again, I think discounts, you know, we're very easy valued. We're not an infrastructure fund where you're never quite sure what the value of the asset is. We're quoted, listed shares, so the net asset value is very clean and easy to understand. So I think it's a great opportunity.
The trust is buying shares back in the market because it thinks, we think it's good value. I own a lot of this as well. It's my largest holding, my entire holding actually of equities for my family, and I haven't sold since 1997. So I'm very keen on it and think it's a great.
So just summing up, core principles really, I've talked about this already, but, you know, to my mind, what I think's great about this trust is global, so it's that reach to be able to invest in all markets. So when you take that electrification theme, I can own the largest, you know, transport of electricity business in India, I own the largest one in China, I own a lot of investments in the US in that space. So we're truly global, we've got the flexibility to manage between different investment styles.
And then finally, sort of, to my mind, low costs is absolutely critical. And so there goes the red light, and I'm just on time. So thank you very much, and we're on the store later.
