Hargreaves Lansdown

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hargreaves Lansdown is a financial service company based in Bristol, United Kingdom, that sells funds and shares and related products via its website and through the post as a discount broker, to retail investors in the United Kingdom. The company was founded in 1981 by Peter Hargreaves and Stephen Lansdown, and initially traded from a bedroom.^[1] As of 2007 the company has 513 employees, 350,000 customers and handles £6 billion in assets.

The company is reported (as of January 2007) to be planning a flotation, which would value the company at £600m, with the group's two founders holding a full 80% of the company.^[2] In 2006, one of the firm's directors hit the news for receiving £9.1m in compensation, the highest paid British director in 2006.^[1]

[edit] Vantage

Vantage is Hargreaves Lansdown's 'investment supermarket'. Available products under the Vantage brand include the Vantage shares ISA, SIPP, PEP, and funds and share accounts.

The company is popular for its discounts on fund products. The company typically rebates all of the initial charge (usually 5%) for investing in shares, which would normally go to the investor's financial advisor as payment for investment advice, and also rebates typically half of the trail commission (typically 0.5% annual trail paid out of an annual management charge of 1.5% on an actively managed fund). As the company's model is a low-cost one, where investor's are responsible for their own investment decisions, and do not pay or receive formal investment advice, it provides fund research and opinion on its website [1], and lists a 'Wealth 150' of what it says are the best funds.

It also operates four multi-manager unit trusts [2], each of which in turn own a share in a number of underlying funds.

Whereas the company is one of the cheapest options for holding unit trusts and OEICs, its 0.5% annual charge for holding shares within an ISA, PEP or SIP makes it less economical for these products.