The FCA should get tough on the fund management industry

The financial regulator has taken a swipe at high fund management fees. The industry will resist change, but the FCA needs to act quickly and decisively, says Merryn Somerset Webb.

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Martin Gilbert of Aberdeen Asset Management gets it. Soon others will, too.
(Image credit: © 2017 Bloomberg Finance LP)

I was rather looking forward to seeing the Financial Conduct Authority's final report on the asset management industry. Its interim report out last November was a criticism-jammed corker, so hopes were high that this week's report would be just as entertaining for those of us in a state of permanent irritation with the fund management sector.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.