Mutual Fund Governance: Depositary Independence and Investor Protection
研究了法国零售基金中托管人是否独立于基金公司对投资者保护的影响，发现独立托管人倾向于批准更公平的费用，但业绩和风险无显著差异。
The main role of a depositary is to protect investors by providing safekeeping and monitoring services. In Europe in general and in France in particular, it is common for funds and their depositary belong to the same financial group. This ownership linkage between funds and their depositary can affect the effectiveness of the depositary services, and investors might not be well protected. Using a sample of 1,515 French equity funds designed for retail investors, I investigate the effects of the dependence of depositaries on investor protection by comparing performance, risk taking and fees between independent and dependent‐depositary funds. The results show that an independent depositary seems to approve more ‘fair’ fees than a dependent depositary. However, there is no significant difference in performance or in risk taking between these two types of funds. Nevertheless, retail investors seem to care about the independence of the depositary.