Lord Myners is right to turn the spotlight on fund managers

The part of Lord Myners' speech that will cause most spluttering in the City is probably this: "If we are going to fully overcome the anaesthetising effect of efficient market theories, the women and men who have money in the market are going to have to start behaving as if they have something to lose. Because let me assure you, I believe they are already losing very substantially due to behaviours that can only be attributed to a lack of personal discipline." This suggestion that some sections of the City haven't learned the lessons of the crisis is surely correct. Underwriting fees on rights issues – costs ultimately charged to shareholders – continue at obscene levels. "Only the unquestioning approach of consumers of investment bank services can be blamed," says Myners. That is not quite right. There are plenty of questions being asked – there just seems to be a failure on the part of professional investors to organise themselves into a fighting force. It amounts to the same thing. Similarly, the failure of the largest fund management houses to condemn bank bonuses is perverse. Bank shares, as a group, have gone nowhere for a decade and yet billions in bonuses have been paid to reward performance. That should provoke outrage among City investors but generally doesn't. Myners filed these two examples under "what regulation cannot do". But the spotlight is turning on the fund management industry – that's welcome.