JB Beckett: Is a Great British bounce-back on the cards for UK fund firms?
Making the UK industry a world beater again
One of my greatest pandemic epiphanies has been for the British economy. One that has increasingly become services-based yet left behind in the global technology war.
Our largest companies represented by the FTSE looks every bit as much the archaic legacy as our awkward colonial history.
There is a huge disconnect then between current populous concerns over unemployment, recession fears, supply chains and retirement funding gaps; versus allocation of capital decisions being taken by UK boards and asset managers today.
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Yet our economy is both circular and open. Past decisions have interpreted this as grounds to globalise allocations to capture higher growth rates and diversify country specific risk. Brexit has been corrosive to the UK outlook. These things have been, but not necessarily should be, mutually exclusive.
The past few months has been very painful for the UK economy. The OECD has noted that the UK was hardest hit among the largest developed economies.
All eyes are now on recovery, and by what means we will recover and what sort of economy we will recover to. Your workers are being encouraged to return to the office, to eat out and spend on the high street.
Yet boards are operating in a bubble to the UK economy and their decisions to diversify UK risk is counter-productive to that very recovery.
Meanwhile the City's steel and glass are hosting activities and profits not necessarily pursuant to growth back into the UK economy.
Today there are fewer home grown asset managers that have not been acquired by US or European conglomerates. Consolidation and M&A activity has accelerated post-Great Financial Crisis.
Aberdeen Standard, Schroders, Royal London, Legal and General and Baillie Gifford stand among the few genuinely large British brands that are still British controlled.
By far the majority of large asset fund managers are controlled and owned overseas.
Meanwhile, UK asset management has been dominated by US firms since the 'Big Bang'. Whether early entrants such as Fidelity (surely the Ford of British asset management) or firms that have entered through acquisition (BlackRock, Columbia, Invesco, Legg Mason or Franklin Resources), the shift in British-controlled assets (proportionally) has been obfuscated by the overall rise in assets reported by the industry as a whole.
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This flow to overseas firms has also been symptomatic of the shift to index based products and ETFs.
I expect few investors will stop to consider where the profits of their investments go. Be in no doubt when it goes to Blackrock, Threadneedle, Invesco, Franklin Templeton or Legg Mason then the answer is (mostly) Stateside.
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