Money Management Executive articles from April 2004

Money Management Executive archives from April 2004

MFS to Pay $50 Million For Directed Brokerage.(Massachusetts Financial Services)(Brief Article)
April 5, 2004... Massachusetts Financial Services last week agreed to pay a $50 million fine to the SEC for not disclosing directed-brokerage agreements, marking the first time the SEC has penalized a fund company for failing to disclose its trading...

SEC to Track Fund Flows, Looking for Market Timing.(Brief Article)
April 5, 2004... The SEC is going to be paying closer attention to abnormal buying and selling in mutual funds. Cash flow is one area that will get heightened scrutiny. "If you look at fund flows in and out, you can identify funds that are susceptible to...

First International Member Joins SMA Trade Group.(separately managed accounts)(Brief Article)
April 5, 2004... The Money Management Institute could be renamed "Money Management International," now that Nikko Cordial Advisors of Japan has become the trade organization's first overseas member. Nikko is determined to increase the popularity of...

Boardroom Blitz Sparks Spat Over SEC Rule.
April 5, 2004... With a potentially groundbreaking governance proposal pending, requiring an independent chairman, there's been a lot of bickering in the mutual fund industry about how to address conflicts in the boardroom. In light of the debate the fund...

SEC May Seek $830M From Putnam: Regulator Shoots For Return of Fees, Plus Numerous Fines.
April 5, 2004... Putnam's woes are far from over as federal regulators are swinging for the fences and are poised to ask a judge to punish the firm more severely than any company mired in the scandal so far. The two sides appear to be farther apart than...

Fund IT, Regulation Costs Sure to Soar.
April 5, 2004... The high price of not keeping up with regulatory demands is well documented, but some in the fund industry are growing increasingly concerned about the growing costs of implementing new measures to keep up with a steady stream of proposed...

Scandal to Continue to Fuel Mergers: Putnam Lovell.(Brief Article)
April 5, 2004... Mutual fund shareholders' woes stemming from revelations of endemic misconduct has amounted to a windfall for investment bankers. The pace of consolidation within the asset management industry continues to accelerate under the weight of massive...

CSFB Creates New Unit For Alternative Capital.(Credit Suisse First Boston)(Brief Article)
April 5, 2004... Credit Suisse First Boston has announced the creation of an alternative investments unit. The alternative capital division is to offer products including private equity and hedge funds, the company said. It has promoted Bennett Goodman to...

China Gives Prudential, Everbright Green Light.(Brief Article)
April 5, 2004... Prudential Investments and China-based Everbright Securities have received a license to launch a fund product in mainland China under the name of a newly formed company, Everbright Prumerica Fund Management Co. The new venture, which will be...

Executive Moves.
April 5, 2004... SEC Names Ricciardi Head of Boston Office PricewaterhouseCoopers litigation leader Walter G. Ricciardi has been named district administrator of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Boston office. Ricciardi, who will take over for...

Religious Funds' Ads Sport Biting Morality Check.
April 5, 2004... Religion may be a solemn subject. But for the Ave Maria Mutual Funds managed by Schwartz Investment Counsel of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., a sense of humor, along with a morality check, is a blessing. Beginning late last year into the first...

Ameritrade Adds SMAs to Attract Accounts $50M-Plus: New to Adviser Channel, Ameritrade Hones Edge With Managed Accounts, Other Services to Attract Advisers With $50 Million-Plus.(Separately managed accounts)
April 5, 2004... Ameritrade, a well-established online brokerage firm, says it is targeting investment advisers, large and small, to develop assets and build wallet share and is making rapid progress because of a big pricing advantage. "We have the...

Soft-Dollar Dilemma Incites Fierce Battle on The Hill.
April 5, 2004... The debate over soft dollars nearly erupted into a barroom brawl on Capitol Hill last week, as the Senate Banking Committee held an open hearing on the much-maligned practice of mutual funds using brokerage commissions to pay for research and...

EnvestnetPMC to Acquire Net Asset Management.
April 12, 2004... EnvestnetPMC has put out an undisclosed bid to acquire Net Asset Management, another Web-based, turnkey provider of separately managed accounts, mutual funds and alternative investments to broker/dealers and independent registered investment...

Criminally Charged Execs Face Scary Future: Fund Cheats Could Do Hard Time With Hardened Criminals.
April 12, 2004... The indictment of former Bank of America broker Theodore C. Sihpol, III last week should sound the alarm for fund executives that those criminally charged in the scandal could spend years locked up with murderers and rapists. Sihpol was...

Janus, Putnam Sport New Ad Campaigns.
April 12, 2004... In an effort to break the stifling full-court press being applied by their critics, two tainted mutual fund shops recently launched expansive advertising campaigns stressing their commitment to achieving solid long-term performance for...

Bringing Hedge Funds to Main Street.
April 12, 2004... Psst...wanna buy a registered hedge fund? That's the message that Wall Street Access, a New York brokerage firm that caters to the high-net-worth investor and active trader, is banking on. The firm has begun running a novel new print...

Janus Places EVP on Leave Amid Market-Timing Probe.(Janus Capital Group Inc.)
April 12, 2004... Lars Soderberg, executive vice president of institutional services and member of the management committee at Janus Capital, has agreed to take a leave of absence from the company. In the mean time, Janus said, it "will continue to evaluate...

Look at Transfer Agents, Roye Tells New Directors.(Brief Article)
April 12, 2004... To spot and stymie potential wrongdoing, pay closer attention to the inner workings of fund management companies, Paul Roye, director of the division of investment management at the SEC, recently told a group of new mutual fund directors. ...

Putnam Admits Misconduct In 401(k) Expense Payouts.
April 12, 2004... Employees of maligned fund giant Putnam Investments tiptoed around company procedures in the area of expense payments, several Putnam funds admitted in a series of disclosures to shareholders. The policies of Putnam Fiduciary Trust Co., a...

Executive Moves.
April 12, 2004... New Prez at Double Alpha; Chender Named to Post Hedge fund firm Double Alpha has named Robert Chender as its new president. Chender has been in the hedge fund industry for more than 15 years and has experience at top-level management at...

China's Great Wall No Longer Keeping Outsiders at Bay.
April 12, 2004... The Great Wall doesn't seem as insurmountable as it once did, as China and its Asian neighbors are rolling back barriers, letting Western companies penetrate their fund markets. A rash of activity and increased buzz surrounding the various...

Mellon to Buy Safeco Trust.(Mellon Financial)
April 19, 2004... Mellon Financial has agreed to purchase Safeco Trust Co. from Safeco Corp., and the deal is expected to be completed by the middle of next month. Safeco Trust, the Seattle-based Safeco subsidiary that handles estate planning and other...

SMA Step-Outs Stymie Best Execution: Managed Account Sponsors, Managers Mull Trading Efficiency.(Separately managed accounts)
April 19, 2004... Operational inefficiencies are nothing new for the separately managed account business. In fact, the lack of connectivity between its key players has stunted what has otherwise been rapid growth in recent years. Indeed, assets held in...

SMAs Bolster Offerings, Expand Platforms.(Separately managed account )
April 19, 2004... Separately managed account providers have been making a number of adjustments lately: bolstering and tweaking product offerings, pruning prices, expanding technology platforms and reinvigorating relationships. Brinker Capital of King of...

Nuveen Emphasizes Product Over Education.
April 19, 2004... First the seminar, then the pitch. The formula is probably as familiar to investment professionals as tea before haggling is to customers in a Turkish bazaar. But a few years ago, Nuveen Investments decided it didn't want to sell their managed...

BoA Adopts Ethics Code.(Brief Article)
April 19, 2004... Bank of America employees will have to sign a revised code of ethics document as a result of regulators' probe of improper trading at its mutual fund unit. In an SEC filing, the bank unveiled a new code of ethics that includes a barring of...

SEC Orders Funds to Show Market-Timing Rules.(Securities and Exchange Commission)(Brief Article)
April 19, 2004... The SEC voted unanimously last Tuesday to adopt measures to improve the transparency of mutual funds and variable annuities. Beginning Dec. 5, all funds must now disclose what risks, if any, market timing poses for their funds, as well as...

Fund Capital Gains Reach Lowest Point Since 1990.(Brief Article)
April 19, 2004... Many mutual fund shareholders were pleasantly surprised in April by plentiful embedded losses in their investments. Capital gains paid by mutual funds slumped in 2003 to an estimated $14 billion, the lowest level since 1990, according to a...

Executive Moves.
April 19, 2004... Federated Stays In-House, Fills Four Executive Slots Federated Investors has appointed CIO William D. Dawson as vice chairman of its investment advisory companies and named three portfolio managers as CIOs. CFA charterholder Dawson...

Correction.
April 19, 2004... "Bringing Hedge Funds to Main Street" (MME 4/12/04) incorrectly identified Wall Street Access' partner as HedgeFunds.net. It is HedgeFund.net. and has no affiliation with Tremont.

SMA Product Glut Leads to Fee Compression.(separately managed accounts)
April 19, 2004... The stranglehold on the distribution of separately managed accounts by a handful of wirehouses has again driven down fees paid to equity investment providers. Recently, Wells Fargo reportedly cut its SMA equity management fees to 36 basis...

Bridging the MDP Generation Gap.(multiple discipline portfolios)
April 19, 2004... With all the focus given to new generations of multiple discipline portfolios (MDPs) in the past year, it would appear that the industry is experiencing a widening generation gap, even before it has fully explored the full potential of MDPs in...

SEC Has More Bark Than Bite in Putnam Settlement.(Securities and Exchange Commission)
April 19, 2004... The Securities and Exchange Commission sure does talk a tough game, but when it came to its settlement with Putnam Investments of Boston earlier this month, the agency was speaking in whispers. The firm agreed to pay $110 million total in...

Money Management Institute to Honor Pioneer Award Winners.
April 19, 2004... Four special individuals have been chosen as this year's recipients of the Money Management Institute's Pioneer Award. Since 1999, the annual Pioneer Award has been bestowed to those worthy individuals who are selected because of their...

Personal Wealth Management at Fiduciary Trust.
April 19, 2004... In their hot pursuit of the high-net-worth and separately managed account markets, investment managers have lowered investment minimums to less than $100,000 and created model investment platforms. Such a mass-market approach would...

New Wachovia Exec Eyes Mass-Affluent Trust Sales.
April 26, 2004... Four months after being reorganized into a separate unit, Wachovia Corp's trust group plans to cross-sell its products and services down-market to mass-affluent customers of the parent bank and its brokerage unit. Cross-selling is not a...

Roame is Burning Over SMA Clients' Needs: Urges Separate Accounts to Strengthen Consumer Ties.(Money Management Institute, separately managed account)(Chip Roame)
April 26, 2004... BOSTON - "Stop congratulating yourself." That was the sobering message Chip Roame had for members of the separately managed account industry at the Money Management Institute's annual convention here last week. In what was a refreshing...

Whiston Out as Janus Carousel Spins: CEO Quits, Replaced by Outsider Scheid.
April 26, 2004... The corporate makeover at Janus Capital continued last week as CEO Mark Whiston, 42, quit and was replaced by board chairman Steve Scheid, 50. Whiston, a 14-year Janus veteran, and the last high-profile face from the old-regime at the...

Registered Hedge Funds Gain in Popularity.
April 26, 2004... A total of 33 new hedge funds have been registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the past 12 months. Eight new hedge funds have been registered so far this year, including new offerings from J.P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch,...

BoA Settlement Expensive But Quick, Vice Chair Says.(Brief Article)
April 26, 2004... The $675 million price tag agreed to by Bank of America and FleetBoston to settle charges in the mutual fund scandal was extremely high, but the companies agreed that expeditious handling of the charges was paramount to closing their merger,...

Standard & Poor's, Prima To Evaluate, Rank SMAs.(separately managed account )(Brief Article)
April 26, 2004... Standard & Poor's last week introduced the separately managed account (SMA) Evaluator, a joint venture with tech company Prima Capital that will act similarly to S&P's mutual fund research tools. Calling its new product a desktop...

Canadian Imperial Bank Faces Class Suit in Scandal.(Brief Article)
April 26, 2004... Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce is facing a class-action lawsuit in relation to the market timing scandal battering the mutual fund industry. The suit, filed by New York law firm Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, claims CIBC facilitated...

Executive Moves.
April 26, 2004... Jeff Etheredge to Manage Distribution at Integrity Integrity Mutual Funds has created a chief executive officer position for its distribution arm and named veteran fund industry executive Jeff Etheredge to fill the slot. Etheredge, who...

Scandal Spurs Investment Industry Consolidation.
April 26, 2004... Asset management industry merger and acquisition activity picked up significantly in 2003, but the size and scope of the deals plummeted, in part, due to concerns arising from the scandal engulfing the fund industry, according to a recent study...