UK-based specialist private client investment firms appear to have struggled to control costs over the medium term according to an analysis of published annual accounts over their five most recent financial years.

Seven of the twenty firms contained in the ranking shown in Table 1 – Tilney, Canaccord Genuity Wealth, Brooks Macdonald, LGT Vestra, James Hambro & Partners, Rathbones, and Stanhope Capital –  all recorded double digit five-year compound annual cost growth rates.

The median value for the 20 firms included in the ranking came out at 7.93 percent.

The range extended from the 0.34 percent ...