“It’s been tough for the industry to remain relevant through all the change,” says Martin Gilbert, who founded Aberdeen Asset Management and guided it through several transformative mergers before stepping back in 2019 after nearly four decades. His firm has since had to struggle on without him – and its vowels after rebranding as Abrdn. His view is hard to challenge. Today’s fund managers are no longer the masters of the universe they once were, driven by a range of factors combined to drain power away from an industry that was formerly the City of London’s crown jewel. It is a story of new investment trends, ill-thought-through pension reforms, a struggling stock market, overzealous regulators and a growing culture of risk aversion in the UK. Add a dash of scandal, such as Neil Woodford’s dramatic fall from grace, and you have a toxic brew. But it didn’t have to be this way. The ascendancy of fund managers can arguably be traced to December 1994, when most people were scratching their heads as to why Yasser Arafat was being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and how East 17’s Stay Another Day could possibly be beating Mariah Carey in the Christmas charts....