Open-End Investment Fund

The core of this book is to a large extent based on a series of interviews with, as far as possible, all the main open-end investment fund groups in the European Economic Community and Switzerland, and on questionnaires completed during these interviews.

With the entry of the United Kingdom into the European Economic Community on 1 January 1973, the opportunity presented itself for a study of open-end investment funds in the enlarged Community. The resulting book, which in a way is a natural sequel to the study Investment and Unit Trusts in Britain and America. (Elek: London, 1968), in which Dr Corner collaborated with Mr H. Burton, has been a long time in preparation, simply because of the sheer volume of statistical material- in particular, consistent sets of reports and accounts of all the EEC and Swiss investment funds - which has had to be collected. As a result, some of the analysis is based on what will inevitably be somewhat dated material at the time of publication. Unfortunately this is a handicap suffered by all such statistical work, unless one has large financial and manpower resources. We have done our best to update certain key statistics wherever this has been possible.