Three years ago, Paul Myners, former chairman of Gartmore Investment Management and adviser to the UK Chancellor, said the buyside should routinely measure the cost its trades incur as a means of making life better for clients.

His recommendations, included in his 2001 report on the UK institutional fund management industry and reiterated by regulators ever since, said trustees deserved to be told how good or bad their fund managers' decisions were. This, he said, could be managed not only by measuring the performance of a stock once it was held, but also by how carefully fund managers were in choosing where and how to buy that stock.