Money Management Executive Latest News

The Securities and Exchange Commission has named Andrew "Buddy" Donohue, Merrill Lynch's global general counsel, as the director of its division of investment management, a position that has been filled by two interim managers since Paul Roye's departure in March 2005.

The NASD has filed a complaint against A.B. Watley Direct and its former representatives Robert Conway and Kenneth Ng for facilitating late trading and improper market timing of mutual funds on behalf of hedge fund clients. In addition, ABW Direct President Robert Malin and Executive Vice President Linus Nwaigwe were charged with lapses in supervision. ABW Direct is a subsidiary of A.B. Watley Direct.

A U.S. Court of Appeals has dropped the independent chairman rule back in the Securities and Exchange Commission's lap, but whether the legal circus surrounding the controversial mandate is nearing an end is anyone's guess.

Drowned by the din of arguments surrounding rules for independent directors and chairmen of mutual fund boards is the increasingly important role of another independent party: attorneys.

Back at his alma mater, school officials introduced him as a man who "lives ethics on a daily basis."

Although the Securities and Exchange Commission sued Edward Jones for $75 million in 2004 for not disclosing revenue-sharing agreements with a select group of mutual funds, the brokerage has continued the practice, and quite profitably. Last year, Edward Jones reaped $172.3 million in revenue-sharing fees from its "preferred" list of mutual funds, more than double previous years, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

Many investors do not realize that fund fees are important when making investment decisions, and instead are swayed by prospectus information even though they sense they are making a mistake, according to the Yale School of Management.

AIG's General Counsel Joins Pillsbury Winthrop

PHOENIX - If there's a single, unqualified maxim in mutual fund industry, it's that performance, above all else, sells. But to what extent it keeps on selling has emerged as a topic of some debate, and that discussion, in turn, reveals some surprising factors that motivate investor behavior and inhibit economies of scale.

Mutual fund websites as a whole are well designed with solid content, according to the "Internet Standards Assessment Report" released by the Web Marketing Association of Boston. The report was based on an assessment by 200 judges of more than 2,300 websites of companies across 85 industries.