Letter from America: Could UK asset managers take up these US solutions?

Industry pressure on fees

Following a recent trip across the Pond, Harry Dickinson, managing partner at funds distributor Harrington Cooper, takes a closer look at how US asset managers are tackling some of the big challenges facing the industry in areas such as costs.

Looking out of the train window as I head back to New York from Boston, several things occur to me. First, US transport infrastructure is not nearly as bad as Americans make out. Sure, trains are always three to five minutes late leaving the station but, hey, they are predictably so. Consistency of performance versus wide dispersion. I know what I prefer. My next observation is how similar the countryside is to Japan. By this, I don't mean that a proliferation of pine trees cling impossibly to steep mountainsides, contorted into tortuous poses - as if the brush of the great Sesshu has...