Watch out Henley, the Thought Police are here!

This week, sources tell me, an FSA team is visiting Henley. Every so often the regulator descends on an asset manager for a top-to-bottom inspection of its activities and this week it's Invesco's turn. One of things the FSA team is told to evaluate is how independent the portfolio managers are in their thinking. Is the decision-making process dominated by one individual?

Leave aside for a moment the question of whether any one individual dominates investment thinking at Invesco. Anyone who has spent time talking to Neil Woodford or seen him interact with the group's other portfolio managers will have a view on that.

And let's not even get started on whether the FSA teams have the expertise to judge whether portfolio managers are thinking independently.

The first question that sprang into my mind was: what's it got to do with the FSA? If one asset manager runs a team where everyone goes their own way, and another chooses to operate using a strong house view, so what? Isn't that just a question of management styles? Surely the regulator has plenty to do without getting even further into subjective territory.