(New York)

Rising rates are good for financials, right? Well, not always, especially for asset managers. The sector is not as directly impacted by rate rises as banks, and investors need to be on the look out for losses. The whole sector is experiencing a grave fee war, with fund pricing recently hitting zero. All managers are now in an effective race to the bottom on fees and only a handful of winners will emerge, all reliant on increasing scale massively to make the low fees viable.

FINSUM: Asset managers are in a nasty and long-term fight. The damage to shares would have been much worse, but the rise in stocks and other assets has boosted AUM, which has offset a lot of the lost revenue from lower fees, helping to insulate the sector.