The firm has been hit hard by levies of £686,000 in 2010 and the “truly astonishing figure of” £2.6m this year.
Chairman David Howard supports the FSA’s vetting of complicated financial products before they reach the market, adding: “The total levy being taken from investment firms is more than £300m. We join with the many companies, professional bodies and trade associations that are calling for a high-level enquiry into how such a thing, on such a scale, could possibly have been allowed to happen.”
The levies were taken from pre-tax profits, which in themselves rose by 30% to £13.4m, up from £10.3m in 2010. Client funds managed and administered by the Charles Stanley Group rose to £14.5bn at the end of March, up from £12.8bn 12 months ago, an increase of 13.3%.
This figure includes funds under discretionary and advisory management rising from £6.35bn to £7.2bn, up by 13.4%. This increase comes from market performance adding an average of 3.4% to client portfolios while net incoming funds from new and existing clients added 10%.
The firm only recently broke through the £100m barrier in terms of revenue with this year recording a record figure of £125.6m, up 9.2% on last year’s £115m.
Charles Stanley is continuing its drive towards increasing the level of discretionary fund management, with clients’ discretionary funds now representing 64% of managed funds compared with 61.2% at the end of March last year.
