I was at lunch with an investment group the other day and was put next to its head of corporate responsibility.
There was a time that I would have rolled my eyes in disappointment at this seating arrangement, but not any more.
You see, being in charge of corporate responsibility is suddenly in vogue.
It has never been so sexy, particularly after investment companies seem to have found their voice.
“Tell me about it,” complained my companion, “I thought this would be a quiet job and now everyone wants to talk to me.”
It brings me great delight that fund managers suddenly find it onerous to take their responsibility for our savings seriously and publicly.
From GKN, to Unilever, Royal Mail, Lloyds and Provident Financial, shareholders in these big companies are shaping boardroom policy, particularly on takeovers and remuneration. The tragedy is that it was never always thus.
This is not a shift shaped by #MeToo, mental health and climate change – the hot topics of the day – but more a push towards transparency and accountability, particularly on remuneration, that is creeping through the industry.
Perhaps the outrage over Jeff Fairburn’s £75m bonus at housebuilder Persimmon has focused minds. The end goal is making the performance of our investments better.
Of course, what most investors have at the top of their priority list is growth and income, but they should care about governance too because ultimately profit depends on having well-run companies.
Take Metro Bank: investors may not have predicted its accounting troubles, but the warning signs of a company that was struggling were there in the general governance questions surrounding its founder.
The corresponding share price plunge became inevitable.
It is beholden on fund managers to ensure that boards are properly held accountable for the sake of all investors, who most likely do not know what is happening from one day to the next.
But at the same time, fund managers have to realise that the same standard applies to them – and in particular to being transparent on stock holdings and costs.
On this latter point, we are getting there. It started with fund management charges – where a decade ago it was argued that no investor cared, we now have a push downwards in costs and greater transparency coming with Mifid II, for all its flaws.
But on stock holdings, it is fine being able to see the limited information in fund fact sheets.
It is simply unacceptable that it is so difficult for ordinary investors to see where all their money is held, or that when they can see it the holdings are embarrassingly out of date.
It is wonderful that investment companies have started showing a keener interest in the good practices of the companies they invest in.
But if they are to be the policemen of the City, they need to uphold a higher standard of transparency too.
Two wrongs do not make a right
The argument over whether London Capital & Finance products were regulated is complicated, but one thing is certain, it seems grossly unfair that independent financial advisers should have to pick up the tab.
This is the problem with the Financial Services Compensation Scheme: it is always the good advice companies that are paying for the bad.
And I have written here before about the onus being on more regulated companies to turn in the bad.
The crucial point here is that LCF did not pay an FSCS levy, and that alone means it should not be able to share the liability of its failure.
For all purposes, LCF was unregulated, but a very tenuous technicality may prove that it was, in a bid to find some way of compensating savers.
I suspect the regulators know they screwed up with LCF and now they are creating another wrong to put it right for savers.
Clever investments – or not
One of the major talking points when a load of journalists and fund managers get together is: what happens when this bull run ends?
What fund managers see is an opportunity to prove their worth; what journalists see is a whole load of people coming a cropper.
In this decade-long bull run we have had a race towards exchange-traded funds, a whole ream of retail investors who suddenly think they can carve a career as day traders, and a number of fund managers who have made some stellar returns and suddenly think they are the best thing since – well, the last fund manager who made a mint in a booming market.
The trouble is that we keep saying this run is going to end, but at the moment there is no sight of it.
There is some pain ahead, and it is when everyone is making money that you have to pay the closest attention to what people are really doing.
When the bull stops charging, a lot of people who thought they were investment geniuses will find they are not so clever after all.
James Coney is money editor of The Sunday Times
