The trustee board in charge of £4.4bn (€4.9bn) of Church of England assets, which fund clergy pensions and church activities, made significant changes to its investment strategy last year, including dropping a long-standing manager because of poor performance.

Andrew Brown, secretary to the Church of England Commissioners, said that Capital International had a mandate worth hundreds of millions of pounds to invest in global equities and blamed "consistent underperformance" for a decision to drop the group. He did not disclose the exact size of the mandate.