Woodford’s protégé under the spotlight

Invesco fund manager Mark Barnett is under fire from the board of the £680milllion investment trust he manages after a run of poor performance. 

Barnett, 49, a protege of fallen stock picker Neil Woodford, has come under scrutiny after Woodford's investment empire, which he set up after leaving Invesco in 2013, imploded spectacularly last month. Barnett follows a similar strategy to that of Woodford – investing in British companies which he believes are undervalued but are still paying out strong dividends. But in the six months to September, the underlying value of the assets held by his Income And Growth trust slid by 1.2%. 

Over the same period, the FTSE All-Share Index climbed 4.6%. Richard Laing, chairman of the Perpetual Income And Growth Investment Trust, said: 'The board is very sensitive to shareholder concerns about continued weak results. Last week, Allied Minds, a company in which both Woodford's funds and Barnett's Invesco funds own a large stake, suffered a 0.4% fall in its share price.