CityWire.co.uk – The crowded fund of funds (FoF) market is to welcome more new names as a host of firms examine fund launches in the area, Citywire has learned.
At least three companies have preliminary sketches on the drawing board. We understand that Threadneedle is seeking a third-party distributor to run FoFs in conjunction with multi-manager Investment Manager Selection; Close Finsbury is looking to deploy its institutional manager of manager business, Escher, in the retail market. Meanwhile HSBC is set to beef up its own offering.
For Threadneedle the move would mark its first step towards providing a complete investment package, rather than portfolio components.
It is understandable that firms would want a piece of this lucrative cake but there is only so much to go around. Moreover, are FoFs run by such groups really the future as the UK intermediary market starts to realise it can run its own fund operations cheaply?
