The folks at kasina pored over publicly-traded asset managers' earnings numbers since 2000 and found that industry operating margins have fallen from 39 percent to 29 percent and net margins have gone down from about 27 percent to 20 percent.

The drop should not come as a shock to fundsters. "The compression is exactly what we would expect to see in a maturing industry," wrote kasina's Eric Daugherty in a blog post last month.

He offered suggestions for asset managers to prop up margins. Click here to view the blog post. 

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