IN BRIEF: Funds chided for `rounding up'

Fund managers were chided bythe National Association of Pension Funds yesterday for making exaggerated claims to journalists when annual performance tables are published.

The NAPF warned that UK investment management houses often release the latest figures over the telephone to journalists without them being authenticated by leading performance measurers.

The stringent due diligence procedures houses would use before putting figures into an advertisement or a company presentation, for example, are not used when talking to the press. This often results in fund managers rounding up performance figures by half a percentage point or so, a significant figure in a near-£1,000bnindustry.