The Finsbury Growth & Income Trust has added former Evening Standard journalist James Ashton to its board after another former hack stood down as a director earlier this year.
Ashton worked at the Evening Standard until 2015, first as City editor and then executive editor. He had previously been City editor at the Sunday Times and also worked at the Daily Mail.
His appointment, which is effective as of Wednesday, comes eight months after the retirement of former City editor at The Telegraph Neil Collins, who had served on the board for 12 years. Collins had previously been a long-serving director on the Templeton Emerging Markets investment trust.
Anthony Townsend, who used to head up the Association of Investment Companies, chairs the £1.9bn investment trust, while the remaining board members come also come from finance backgrounds, including a former Morgan Stanley Investment Management fund manager, a chartered accountant and two former executives from Numis and Peel Hunt respectively.
But journalism experience is not unusual among investment trust directors.
Alliance Trust director Clare Dobie used to be a financial journalist at The Times and The Independent. Dobie also serves on the Schroder UK Mid Cap and BMO Capital and Income investment trusts. And Mary Ann Sieghart, a former assistant editor of The Times, is a director of Merchants.
Several practicing journalists also serve on boards. Moneyweek editor-in-chief and Financial Times columnist Merryn Somerset Webb is a director on Murray Income, Baillie Gifford Shin Nippon, and Montanaro European Smaller Companies.
Freelance journalist David Stevenson is a director of Aurora and Gresham House Energy Storage Fund PLC and chairs Secured Income Fund PLC.
AIC communications director Annabel Brodie-Smith points out the industry body has recently launched a website, Pathway, to encourage candidates without a finance or investment background to find out about becoming investment trust directors.
“Good communication with shareholders is always important and in recent years we have seen more demand for media and communications expertise on investment company boards,” Brodie-Smith said.
