Nick Train told shareholders at the Finsbury Growth & Income (FGT ) annual general meeting the fate of Manchester United in his portfolio is undecided following the sale of a quarter of the company to Ineos founder Jim Ratcliffe at a significant premium.

Speaking alongside co-portfolio manager Madeline Wright, Train said he would have preferred a sale of 100% of the equity, but emphasised Ratcliffe’s accepted offer valued the company at $4bn (£3.2bn), the highest value ever recorded for a football club.

The accepted offer of $33 per share was a 60% premium to the end of December share price. The company makes up 2% of the £1.6bn UK equity income trust, meaning the pair can expect around £12.8m in cash.  

Manchester United was trading at $19.40 per share on Tuesday.

‘I’m not putting up the bunting, but it could be worse. We’ll see where the share price settles. I have no animus against the Glazers - evidently they want to crystallise the fullest value they possibly can for that family asset. And you’ve got to deduce that from their behaviour: they still own 71% after this deal and they said $33 is the minimum they’re prepared to sell at,’ Train (pictured) said.

Train was speaking a difficult period for the trust, as it was its third consecutive year of underperformance against the FTSE All-Share index benchmark.

The manager said he was sticking to his guns and adding to some of the biggest losers over the last 12 months, including drinks company Diageo (DGE) and luxury clothes retailer Burberry (BRBY). They respectively make up 9.5% and 5.9% of assets.

He highlighted the ‘true growth prospects’ of these companies, with Diageo seeing revenues rocket from £1.2bn in 2009 to £2.7bn in 2019, while estimates forecast £3.1bn this year, which will be helped by China when it picks up momentum.

The pair were very excited about their ‘six big winners’, the top-performing companies in 2023 that are particularly well positioned to benefit from artificial intelligence.

Investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown (HL), online real estate agent Rightmove (RMV) and data companies Sage (SGE), Experian (EXPN), London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) and RELX (REL) are some of the biggest bets in the portfolio, with all six constituting a whopping 53% of the portfolio.

As an example of long-term returns Wright pointed to analytics company, RELX, which is the best-performing stock on the FTSE 100 since its creation 40 years ago.

While Rightmove is the only new holding, with a position established in 2023, Wright reassured shareholders that they weren’t myopically looking at the existing portfolio.

‘More than half the portfolio is invested in companies we think are incredible opportunities that will directly benefit from digitalisation and AI. And that percentage will increase as we continue to build the position in Rightmove and possibly introduce other UK companies,’ she said.

Shareholders in the 2.3%-yielding trust saw returns of 3% over the last three years, a fraction of the benchmark’s 20%, Deutsche Numis data shows, while FGT’s 10-year returns of 96% put it ahead by almost 40%.

The board has been active in buying back shares, which closed at 830p on Tuesday, a 7% discount to the most recent net asset value of 891.23p per share.