In Tuesday's Wall Street Journal Fund Track, Ian Salisbury warns individual investors that M&A activity in the fund industry can lead to fund manager departures and higher fees.

Salisbury points to two examples. Five years after Merrill Lynch's 1996 purchase of California-based Hotchkis & Wiley, three Hotchkis managers departed to launch a new firm. Their old fund, which now sports the name BlackRock International Value, went from being in the top 10 of its category in 1996 to being in the middle of its peer group. But acquisitions can also boost performance. Since BlackRock acquired that fund in 2006, its performance has improved somewhat.

As for fee increases, Salisbury brings up the fund now known as Columbia Acorn. The fund was a no-load fund for 30 years, but it added a sales load and hiked its expense ratio for new investors after it was acquired by Liberty Financial in 2000.

So what could be in store for investors in iShares' ETFs, now that Barclays has agreed to sell the business to private-equity firm CVC Capital Partners? While there might be some employee departures, strategies aren't likely to change substantially since the funds are index funds, and individual portfolio managers have a less prominent role than they do at actively managed funds.

And the price competition in the ETF realm remains cutthroat. With rivals such as State Street Global Advisors and Vanguard seeking to grab market share from iShares by rolling out similar fund with lower fees, CVC Capital faces pressure to keep costs down, Salisbury writes. 

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