Ian Lance

There you had what you might call a quality stock, but it was available at a really low valuation, which is just, that's your nirvana, isn't it?

I think the answer is no.

One or two of them are starting to move down into interesting territory.

So actually, a stock which was almost the post-child of sort of quality growth was Diageo.

So we haven't owned Diageo.

I don't think we've ever owned Diageo, actually.

We initiated a position recently on Diageo.

Why?

Because the earnings have come down.

The dividend's been cut.

You're now actually only paying 12 times lowered earnings.

You've got a change of management with Dave Lewis coming in.

So, you know, it's got the ingredients there for a business that could do relatively well.

To be honest with you, we haven't gone sort of gangbusters on it.

Why?

Because actually I think there are potentially some quite deep structural issues going on here.

If you look at spirits volumes all around the world, spirits volumes are going down at the moment, actually.

And it's, you know, there's a possibility that,

that this industry is no longer the growth industry that people once thought that just consumer tastes have been changing, people are consuming less alcohol.

For a new management team, if you're facing those sorts of structural issues, that's a big challenge.