The Japanese car maker was offered a secret package of state aid worth up to £80m

Fund managers including the City stock-picker Richard Buxton have accused the government of distorting the market with its support deal for Nissan.

It emerged last week that the Japanese car maker had been offered a secret package of state aid worth up to £80m in 2016 to cope with the effects of Brexit.

Buxton, head of UK equities at Merian Global Investors, said: “It’s a double standard. The government makes companies abide by very strict rules on what they have to disclose, and then completely disregards them with this kind of secrecy.” The comments come after figures from the Investment Association showed investors pulled £4.9bn out of UK stock market funds last year.

Seema Shah, investment strategist at Principal Global Investors, said the lack