Jupiter: Rush is on for banks to revamp client research fees

Fund manager Jupiter Fund Management on Wednesday said banks were struggling to nail down a new charging model for research before a looming deadline next year.

Investment banks will start charging fund managers for corporate research from January 1 under new EU rules but there’s little unity on what to charge, according to Jupiter chief executive Maarten Slendebroek.

“This is an area where the sell-side has to settle down and decide how they want to charge us,” he said.

“What you see is an industry trying to come up with a new pricing model and it hasn’t quite settled down yet. We have six months to fix that.”

Some banks are proposing a six-figure fee for basic research, and extra top-up payments for analyst access and invitations to conferences.

Jupiter spent around £5 million on research last year and plans to spend a similar amount each year.

Slendebroek said he would leave it to fund managers to decide how they spend their own research budgets.

“It’s possible team A want it in a different form from Team B,” he said.

The funds group bounced back from sluggish performance in recent quarters to record £3.6 billion of inflows for the six months ending 30 June.

New sales offices in Italy and Spain helped to propel the growth.