Why asset managers' share prices are at risk

CONTRARIAN

I seem to have spent most of the last few decades wondering how our economy could sustain so many estate agents and builders.

Maybe we will spend the next decade wondering whether there are just too many asset managers, hedgies and … IFAs? Polite dinner parties in middle class circles a few years back might have focused on the painful decline of building or estate agents as a national sector, whereas now it is City analysts and their advisers. Barely a day goes by without news of another wave of layoffs in the City community. So far, the asset management and advisory space seems to have come through this storm relatively intact, but I suspect much bigger changes are on their way. On paper, advising on per...