7th July 2026

Article: From luxury to necessity: air-con and ventilation

Britain may not be built for heat, but its future increasingly demands that it is. Rathbone UK Opportunities Fund Manager Alexandra Jackson and Rathbone Greenbank Global Sustainability Fund Manager David Harrison explore the investment case behind cooling, ventilation and climate resilience.

Written by Alexandra Jackson, Fund Manager of the Rathbone UK Opportunities Fund & David Harrison, Fund Manager of the Rathbone Greenbank Global Sustainability Fund

Imagine you wanted to bake the world's most intricate cake. Not just any cake – one with billions of layers, each thinner than a human hair, stacked with atomic precision. You'd need a very special oven. In the semiconductor world, ASML makes that oven.

As the UK broils under record-breaking heat, the trains fail, the kids get sent home from school and workers weigh up a hellish Underground commute for the bastion of cool offices. Only one thing brings respite: air-con. And in the UK, it’s much less prevalent than we’d like.

Our nation isn’t known for its embrace of air-con. Apart from a fever-dream improvement for the tube during summer, it hasn’t really been seen as a necessity. But as climate change makes heatwaves more frequent and severe, this surely must change!

Investments

Registration

Free Registration and CPD

Rathbones Asset Management - The Sharpe End podcast: Fresh Intel

A month into Andy Burnham’s tenure as Prime Minister, the team are asking what he could possibly do to turn the UK economy and stock market around. Next, we explore the rally in software stocks, as improving growth expectations reignite enthusiasm for some names in the sector that many had written off just a year ago. Finally, this month’s stock spotlight is Intel – a company that helped build the modern technology industry and is now attempting an ambitious turnaround as a crucial beneficiary of the broad AI infrastructure build-out.

There's more to 'value' investing than valuations

Semantics matter. Words carry associations that can't always be neatly translated into a different cultural context. First impressions often determine whether investors are prepared to allocate money to an investment strategy.

Business Sentiment Tracker: Business confidence falls in Q2 2026

Business confidence has weakened in the second wave of YouGov's quarterly Business Sentiment Tracker, with businesses becoming less optimistic about the economy, their industries, and their own prospects.

Not yet registered?

Please complete this form to join our community

Name


Email


Company


Select your role:


Password


Confirm Password

About Us

Read

Learn

Attend

Connect

My Panacea

Press Centre