DFM 'poorly named' to communicate bespoke management

The firm's business development director was speaking at a roundtable organised by Discus on the current state of the DFM market and was responding to a claim that DFMs were ‘closet trackers'. "DFM, I think, is poorly named because a unit trust is just managed on a discretionary basis," he said. "So are you talking about bespoke management or are you talking about model portfolios?" Denham-Davis suggested the claim DFMs were ‘closet trackers' had been driven, to a degree, by the focus on cost through the second iteration of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II). ...