Getting engaged too costly for fund managers

Lord Myners: criticism

Various fund managers have owned up to being a bit pathetic when it came to challenging powerful banking figures. They have been roundly castigated by the likes of Lord Myners and Hector Sants for their failure to act as responsible owners, and cannot expect to escape notice in Sir David Walker’s review of corporate governance in the banking industry when that is published later this week.

No doubt they could and should have been a bit less accommodating of banks’ plans for world domination, but in the end there is limit to the sanction they can apply. Passive trackers, which probably hold the biggest stakes, cannot threaten to sell, and active managers rarely hold large enough stakes to make selling much of an issue for a company.