The FTSE 100 stocks that have turned £100 into £30k over the past 40 years
As the FTSE 100 celebrates its fortieth birthday, Morning Wire is looking back at the companies that have shaped the index over the past four decades.
London’s premier stock index has seen plenty of companies come and go since its launch, with just 26 of the original constituents still in place today (and most of those are completely unrecognisable).
Of these 26, three companies have turned a £100 investment into more than £30,000, and they may not be the companies you’d expect.
The FTSE’s top performer over the past forty years is RELX, formerly Reed International. A £100 investment would now be worth over £35,000 if investors had reinvested dividends.
The company took its present form when Reed International, a book publisher, merged with Elsevier, a Dutch-based scientific publisher, in 1993. Since then it has invested heavily in building out its data analytics capabilities.
Its share price climbed over 30 per cent in 2023.
An investment in British American Tobacco would also have generated a very healthy return.
Despite the decline in smoking in the UK, investors would be sitting on a total return £33,000 if they had invested £100 in 1984.
Although shares in British American Tobacco lost just over 30 per cent in 2023, the company is pinning its hopes on the rise of e-cigarettes.
Rio Tinto is the third stock that would have turned £100 into £30,000.
The mining giant weathered a poor start to the year in 2023, largely because of China’s stuttering economic recovery, but the potential of its new iron ore mine in Guinea helped Rio regain investor confidence in the second half.
Here are the top ten performing stocks from 1984 based on an investment of £100.
| Share price | Total return if dividends reinvested | |
| RELX (formerly Reed International) | £6,520 | £35,493 |
| BATS | £3,813 | £33,246 |
| Rio Tinto | £3,364 | £30,174 |
| Unilever | £3,750 | £27,228 |
| Prudential | £1,256 | £25,572 |
| Whitbread | £3,234 | £13,991 |
| Legal & General | £1,523 | £13,677 |
| Glaxo | £1,675 | £12,684 |
| Tesco | £1,632 | £11,589 |
| BAE | £2,081 | £10,876 |