ESG

While one doesn’t know enough yet to comment on the veracity of these allegations, this does shine the spotlight on the issue of governance at mutual funds. There’s a lot of song and dance on whether listed public companies are managed in the interests of their shareholders. But what about mutual funds? 
MFs are essentially custodians of public money, where both profits and losses are entirely passed on to unitholders. I give money to a fund manager to deliver a certain return from an asset class. But I am paying a fixed fee to him which he gets whether he does better or worse than the market. This pass-through nature of mutual funds means that the unitholder is most affected when the fund is mis-governed or mis-managed.