27 JUNE 1998, Page 22

Howard, come home

IT'S THOSE regulators, you see. They COs! more and more, and all in the name of investor protection. This is why ABN Am ° i Asset Management says it is putting up ts charges on its UK Growth Fund. The fund has done well — certainly when it was called Pembroke and run by John Carring- ton — and its managers have done well too, since they have been paying themselves 1114 per cent of their fund's value. They now think that 11/2 per cent would be more like it. Instead they should be urging frugalnY on Howard Davies, their regulator-in-chid He has set himself up in his new 2,000- seater Docklands base — the City, he said offered nothing that was big enough — and is now struggling to fill it. There will be a loyalty bonus for staff who see out next win- ter in Warsaw-on-Thames. He should be prompted to move back to London and, when his office fills up, to stop hiring. One way and another, investors and regulators would be better off.