Focus on charges not investment style

Simon James, founding partner at Gore Browne Investment Management, wades into the fee debate, urging investors to separate charges from product investment styles and returns.

There is currently an active and important debate on fees and charges in the fund management industry, and their impact upon returns to investors. This is an essential debate, but unfortunately it frequently merges a potentially rigorous analysis of fund charges and potential solutions with an assertion about product preference. This approach allows the debate upon fees to be deflected towards a debate upon the merits of different products' returns. This is a distraction from the more important issue of charges, and so detracts from the quality of the debate. There are two problems re...