Fund manager Mark Barnett has been removed from investment trust Perpetual Income and Growth (PLI). His strategy, picking under-priced stocks seemingly trading at less than their intrinsic value, has been out of favour for years, and the board at PLI cited prolonged underperformance in their decision to sack Barnett and his employer, Invesco.

It comes after issues for fellow value investor Alastair Mundy at Temple Bar (TMPL), who was forced by the board to sell some stocks to raise cash and reduce borrowing after the trust’s share price halved.

 Where Perpetual Income and Growth goes from here in seeking a new manager could signal where value investing is headed, and is likely to go one of two ways.

It could stick with value like Edinburgh Investment Trust (EDIN), which replaced Barnett last December with Majedie’s James de Uphaugh, another well-known value investor. 

The other option would be to mirror Baillie Gifford European Growth (BGEU), which lost patience last October under the previous name of European Investment Trust following a decade of underperformance and sacked value-orientated fund manager Edinburgh Partners, shifting instead to growth investing.

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