Nick Clay, a senior equity manager at Newton Investment Management, warned National Association of Pension Funds conference delegates that markets have entered “an era of broken promises”.

In a fringe session at the NAPF conference entitled The lost art of active equity investing, Clay pointed out that bond yields had fallen into negative territory following quantitative easing by central banks. He said: "Investors have been migrating away from their comfort zone as a result of financial repression, because they have had their income stolen."