Two intertwined stories dominated the world’s thoughts last year: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and rising inflation and interest rates. In that context, it’s no surprise that the domestic-focused FTSE 250 struggled for much of 2022, in contrast to the large-cap index’s array of energy giants, dollar earners and banks.
Yet although two banks sit atop the FTSE 350 total return performance tables for the past 12 months, they aren’t large caps – and nor are they household names. Georgian lenders Bank of Georgia (BGEO) and TBC Bank (TBCG) have prospered from more business flowing through the country’s economy after trade routes in Russia were shut off. Georgian geopolitical risk is also now deemed to be lower given its neighbour’s focus will be on Ukraine for the foreseeable future.
If those are complex investment cases that arguably only make sense in retrospect, there were more obvious winners, too. They included BAE Systems (BA.) and Glencore (GLEN), both of which benefited in their own way from the war and its repercussions.