“It is always a good start to our busiest season,” she explains.This year’s fair will also include a huge range of paintings. And, apart from the European exhibits on show, the fair also boasts a display of 20th-century Chinese lacquer work. If you would like to know more, Andrew Bolton, curator of the Far Eastern Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum, will give a lecture on the Yangzhou loan exhibition at the fair on Wednesday 18 November, at 6.30pm.For those here to spend, the good news is that, although the fair does attract a large number of collectors and knowledgeable buyers, help will always be on hand for those with less expertise. Sonya Newell-Smith of the Tadema Gallery, a regular exhibitor at the Fair, is enthusiastic about the event. “While luxurious items – from spectacular jewellery to elegant furniture – appeal to the serious collectors and buyers, other visitors appreciate the choice, particularly of decorative pieces, either for themselves or as gifts.”

There will be 230 international dealers participating in this year’s fair, which begins on Monday, and exhibits will encompass just about everything from candelabra to ceramics. Antique-silver expert, Suzy Fitz Gerald of J H Bourdon- Smith Ltd, enjoys the “festive atmosphere” of Olympia, where visitors can make the most of the fact that “there are always unusual presents to suit all budgets.”Jewellery on display will include Anthea AG Antiques’ 19th-century, pearl- and-15-carat-gold necklace and tiara (pounds 3,650), and Tadema’s Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Sixties designs. Hoping to attract discerning buyers to this year’s furniture dealers, Borwick points out the success of last year’s variety of English furniture.
In addition to the furniture, though, there will also be a huge range of silver, including a pair of Benjamin Smith silver-gilt seven-light Regency candelabra.

Right: Colourings Lip Tint, pounds 3.75, The Body Shop (01903 731500). “THE WINTER Olympia is like an exclusive store,” says Victoria Borwick, director of Olympia Winter Fine Art and Antiques Fair. Romance Lip Balm, pounds 4.95, Crabtree & Evelyn (mail order 01235 862244)

Shu Uemura Lip Gloss, pounds 12
(enquiries 0171 493 4349)Face Stockholm Pot Gloss in Striking, pounds 10, Liberty (0171 734 1234)Gloss Pot in Lust, pounds 1.59, Collection 2000 (stockists 01695 50078)Lip Gloss 06, pounds 5.50, French Connection (enquiries 0171 399 7200)Black Lilac Glosswear, pounds 8, Clinique (0171 409 6951 for stockists)Left: Divinyls Lip Gloss in Black Dahlia, pounds 9, Trucco (mail order 01222 255065). Until boards stiffen demands on the fund managers, to make them more accountable and more performance conscious, the risks of Darwinian extinction will continue to hover over this venerable, but fascinating, sector.. BT Alex Brown make the forceful point that the arrival of index tracking funds and OIECs (effectively single price unit trusts) faces the sector with an even bigger competitive challenge than in the past.Can the sector pull itself out of its current rut? I still think so. Discounts will never be eliminated completely, but they show the failure of many investment trusts to take their responsibilities to shareholders seriously.It doesn’t help that a number of fund management companies run unit trusts and investment trusts. Any solution has to involve at least two things.One is the willingness of fund management groups to try and exploit the distinctive capabilities that investment trusts still have, which include their lower costs, the ability to borrow, and the scope to offer distinctive capital structures (an unsung success story of the past few years, for example, has been the market niche established by zero dividend preference shares).The second requirement is the boards of investment trusts start to earn their crust.

Institutional investors no longer have any need or desire to gain international exposure through the sector, and are actively looking for opportunities to divest their remaining holdings as soon as it is timely and tax-efficient to do so.So the investment trust sector will sink or swim by its ability to find effective ways to reach the retail investment public. Overall, total expense ratios for investment trusts are markedly lower than those of equivalent unit trusts (though emerging markets trusts and other specialist funds are more expensive, producing a uniquely unfavourable combination of lousy performance and high charges).It is true that there are far too many indifferently-managed investment trusts around, and a cull is urgently needed, but the quality of investment management is generally superior to the competition.What is not in doubt is that the future of investment trusts can lies in the retail investment market. But once you allow for the fact that investment trusts have always had a greater international exposure than other retail market funds, the relative performance is not so bad.However, nobody can deny that any business which seeks to sell its customers investment funds, and loses them money on half its new product range, faces a serious marketing problem. This is exacerbated by the fact that investment trusts have been unable (or unwilling) to pay commissions to independent financial advisers, and are not getting the sales push from intermediaries that unit trusts capitalise on.This is a pity, since the evidence continues to show that many traditional investment trusts are still exceptionally good value. This in turn reflects the broader paradox that investors nonsensically want to buy funds which are in markets or sectors that have done best in the recent past, rather than those which have done less well and which can be expected to do better in future.While widening discounts have been a problem for all investment trusts, BT Alex Brown’s data suggests that, on closer analysis, the underlying performance of the fund managers themselves has not been that bad. Measured against the Footsie index, the asset value performance of the sector has rarely been as poor as it is now.