A black day for investment fund managers

David Kuo, Director at the popular financial website The Motley Fool - Fool.co.uk, says: "Barclays has agreed to sell its jewel in the crown, Barclays Global Investors (BGI), to BlackRock for a tidy sum of £8.2 billion. It is inconceivable that the deal would ever have been done had Barclays not been in need of cash to bolster its balance sheet.

"But the purchase of BGI by BlackRock highlights a seismic shift by one of the world's biggest asset managers towards Exchange Traded Funds. It is tacit acceptance that stock market investors are balking at the high fees charged by active fund managers for mediocre performance.

"For most investors, Exchange Traded Funds are the cheapest way to gain exposure to the stock market. After all, why pay someone a hefty fee when you are 60% more likely to do much better with a passive fund that simply tracks the market."