{"id":84361,"date":"2017-09-14T08:31:52","date_gmt":"2017-09-14T08:31:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=a0279c389254a25fd33e769fa9720682"},"modified":"2017-09-14T08:31:52","modified_gmt":"2017-09-14T08:31:52","slug":"news-story-cma-launches-market-investigation-into-investment-consultants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=84361","title":{"rendered":"News story: CMA launches market investigation into investment consultants"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"govspeak\">\n<p>Investment consultants advise many pension funds on investment strategies, asset allocation and fund manager selection. As well as giving advice, some investment consultants also manage investments on behalf of the pension scheme (\u201cfiduciary management\u201d). A number of investment consultants also advise employers on the design of pensions and operate them via in-house \u201cmaster trust\u201d arrangements.<\/p>\n<p>Following its recent market study into the asset management sector, the Financial Conduct Authority (<abbr title=\"Financial Conduct Authority\">FCA<\/abbr>) <a rel=\"external\" href=\"https:\/\/www.fca.org.uk\/publications\/market-studies\/asset-management-market-study-final-decision-mir\">has concluded<\/a> that it has reasonable grounds to suspect there are features of the sector which prevent, restrict or distort competition.<\/p>\n<p>The <abbr title=\"Financial Conduct Authority\">FCA<\/abbr> estimates that the 12 largest investment consultants advise on around \u00a31.6 trillion of assets. They found:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>signs that the buyers of investment consultancy may not be best placed to judge quality or value for money of the service they receive<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>evidence of the biggest firms holding a large share of the market<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>barriers to expansion restricting smaller, newer consultants from developing their business<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>some potential conflicts of interest relating to the other services offered by a number of firms<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The <abbr title=\"Financial Conduct Authority\">FCA<\/abbr> has now referred investment consultancy and fiduciary management<br \/>\nservices in the UK for examination by the Competition and Markets Authority (<abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr>). The <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr>\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/cma-cases\/investment-consultants-market-investigation\">independent investigation<\/a> will determine whether there are any adverse effects on competition in this sector. If any are found, it will decide whether \u2013 and if so, what \u2013 remedial action should be taken to address these.<\/p>\n<p>During its investigation, the <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr> will gather a large amount of information on the market, including running a bespoke market survey. It will engage with key participants and it will undertake significant economic analysis before coming to its conclusions.<\/p>\n<p>Requests for information have today been sent to the main companies involved to allow this work to begin. An issues statement setting out the proposed focus of the investigation and potential remedies \u2013 in the event that an adverse effect on competition is found \u2013 will also be published shortly, and all responses to this will be welcomed.<\/p>\n<p>Information on how any organisation or individual can submit their views, together with supporting evidence, to the <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr> can be found on the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/cma-cases\/investment-consultants-market-investigation\">case page<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr> will shortly appoint independent panel members to the Group and publish a timetable setting out a schedule for the various stages of the investigation. The appointed Group act as the decision makers and are chosen from the <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr>\u2019s panel members, who come from a variety of backgrounds, including economics, law, accountancy and\/or business.<\/p>\n<p>The <abbr title=\"Competition and Markets Authority\">CMA<\/abbr> will conclude the investigation by March 2019.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Following a reference from the FCA, the CMA is today launching a market investigation into investment consultancy and fiduciary management services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84361"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84361\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}