Practice

The Investment Company Institute has dismissed a Securities and Exchange Commission initiative that would require fund companies to disclose how they vote on proxies, insisting that the proposal would favor political groups and pose a risk to shareholders and fund complexes.

The National Association of Securities Dealers of Washington has won a legal battle against a publisher who uses NASDR data about broker/dealers. A federal court in Florida dismissed a lawsuit brought by the publisher, Edward Siedle, who demanded access to NASDR data, saying NASDR could restrict information that appears on its public disclosure Web site and how that information can be used.

He got the markets running in less than a week after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and waged the most aggressive reforms in the history of the SEC. In the end, it was his own bravado (wanting to be named to the Cabinet) and impediments to true bottom-line numbers (through his poor choice of chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and conflict of interest over his previous work for AOL), that took Chairman Harvey Pitt down.

The 401(k) reform bills that have been brewing in Washington for the past year will likely be tabled until the 2003 session of Congress.

Firms Scramble Ahead of SEC Decision to Comply With Law

Proxying fund shareholders is often seen as a necessary evil in order to make significant changes to a fund, or, in some cases, liquidate it.

With shareholder activism and corporate governance such a hot topic lately, MFMN set out to discover what's driving shareholder proxies these days, and what kind of response rates they're getting.

When former President Bill Clinton signed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act in April 2000, there was wide speculation that e-signatures would transform not just financial services but e-commerce as well.

Is Gary Winnick, chairman of beleaguered telecom Global Crossing, trying to save his own hide by making a public pledge of $25 million to those among his employees who lost large sums of their 401(k)s plan during the recent telecom bust? Or, is he, as he recently told Congress, trying to set a precedent in corporate moral responsibility?

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