The recent consolidation among fund managers may be well timed. Henderson Group has disappeared from the London market, having bought Janus Capital and switched its listing to New York. Aberdeen Asset Management has merged with Standard Life to become the imaginatively entitled Standard Life Aberdeen.
There are a number of drivers for these changes. Last year, with the Brexit shock, was not a good one for active managers. Margins are in decline as a consequence of the shift towards passive management and a perception that fund managers have had it too good for too long. The Aberdeen-Standard Life deal was largely driven by the former’s high exposure to emerging markets, which had had an awful couple of years but are now recovering sharply.
Looming over