Practice

A suit charging that New York Life Insurance Co. breached its fiduciary duty as a sponsor to two pension plans and two 401(k) plans, is entirely without merit, the company said in a statement issued prior to the suit's filing.

BOSTON - The SEC is considering amending its proposed rules on independent directors to relieve directors' relatives from SEC scrutiny, said Paul Roye, director of the SEC's division of investment management. Roye spoke at a meeting of the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association here recently.

BOSTON - In a study examining mutual fund fees, the General Accounting Office has criticized the mutual fund industry and the SEC for not monitoring fees more closely, according to Geoff Bobroff, president of Bobroff Consulting, of East Greenwich, R.I.

James Mehling, a former vice president of New York Life Insurance Company in New York, last week filed a class action lawsuit, charging that New York Life improperly shifted assets held in both a company-sponsored pension plan and a 401(k) plan and used them as seed money for new proprietary institutional mutual funds.

The SEC will review the auditor independence rules of the top five accounting firms, the SEC has announced.

Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP of New York has filed a class action lawsuit in New York Supreme Court against Prudential Securities and affiliates of the AEGON group of companies on behalf of investors who purchased annuities used to fund qualified retirement plans.

Some mutual fund directors are chronically absent from fund board meetings, according to a top SEC official.

The Investment Company Institute has criticized an SEC proposal that would require investment advisers to disclose custodian and administrative fees, soft dollars and disciplinary actions against them.

The McGraw-Hill Companies of New York, parent company of Standard & Poor's, filed a lawsuit against Vanguard Group of Malvern, Pa. charging that Vanguard breached the 15-year-old licensing agreement it had with S&P by registering a new class of exchange-traded shares on three of Vanguard's equity index funds without the index creator's approval.

An SEC administrative law judge has sanctioned two executives of the now defunct Target Income Fund of Glendora, Calif. for their role in filing registration statements on behalf of the fund that failed to include significant facts.