J.P. Morgan Investment Beats Mutual Fund Excessive Fee Claims

J.P. Morgan Investment Management Co. brushed off claims that it charged excessive fees to advise certain mutual funds.

The mutual fund shareholders failed to show that the fee charged “is so disproportionately large that it bears no reasonable relationship to the services rendered and could not have been the product of arm’s length bargaining,” the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said.

The court rejected the shareholders’ argument that J.P. Morgan charges higher fees to advise the funds than it does to sub-advise other mutual funds, even though it uses the same strategy for both.

A sub-adviser is supervised ...