London investment head gets £14 million for failure

Anyone who’d invested in the Finsbury Growth and Income Trust might already have been feeling like a chump before yesterday’s news. The trust has lost 2.8 per cent in value over the past three years while the FTSE All-Share index has gained 23.9 per cent. Its manager, Nick Train, who also runs the Lindsell Train investment boutique, apologised last week for “three years and more of underperformance”. Then, according to the FT, he accepted £14 million in dividends from his own companies. It’s hard to know how sincere Train’s apology is given he stands by his stock picks and recently appeared to blame London, as a “backwater of global equity markets”, for their negative growth. BlackRock this ain’t. Lindsell Train manages £15.2 billion to BlackRock’s $10.4 trillion. Which makes those dividends all the more remarkable.