Fund recommendations take the strain of pricing battles

Price versus value debate still rages on

The dust has settled on the wave of pricing deals (or non-deals) announced by platforms earlier this year, but there are still signs of lingering tensions.

A cynic, as Oscar Wilde famously said, is a man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Or, as Warren Buffett clarified a century later, price is what you pay and value is what you get. Aphorisms like these, making the case for the difference between price and value, are useful for proponents of active management. That has particularly been the case over the past 18 months, when price has come into focus more sharply as a result of unbundling. The debate has taken more of a backseat in recent months, but it has not gone away. For an example, look to Hargreaves L...