Money Management Executive Latest News

Susan Ferris Wyderko has been named acting director of the division of investment management for the Securities and Exchange Commission, overseeing mutual funds and investment advisors, the Federal agency announced late last week.

UBS Financial Services will pay $54 million to settle market-timing charges from the New York Stock Exchange, the New Jersey Bureau of Securities and the Connecticut Attorney General. Under the agreement, UBS will split $49.5 million between NYSE and New Jersey and pay $5.5 million to Connecticut. New Jersey's $25 million share is the largest fine any state has collected in a securities matter.

After faring a stormy sea in 2005, Fidelity Investments, the Boston-based mutual fund giant that turns 60 this year, is working hard to keep investor confidence on course, the Associated Press reports.

Daniel Calugar, the former owner of the broker/dealer Security Brokerage, agreed to pay $103 million in ill-gotten gains and a civil penalty of $50 million to settle charges of late trading and market timing, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced last week. The civil penalty is the largest the SEC has imposed on any person or company in the mutual fund trading scandal to date.

Mutual fund shareholder sentiment was on the rise again in 2006, according to a survey from the Investment Company Institute of Washington, and some experts say it's proof that the industry is making strides at reclaiming its reputation as a noble custodian of Americans' precious investment dollars.

Investors can expect mutual funds in 2006, as in 2005, to continue to chug, but not zoom, ahead, according to senior analysts at Lipper of New York.

Want to invest in Asian securities for your mutual funds? You might want to consider staking claim to an office in Hong Kong or even India in order to cozy up to the Asian investment marketplace.

Reverberations from the collapse of derivatives broker Refco may have put PlusFunds Group on some shaky ground, according to MarketWatch.com. Last month, Refco creditors questioned how the fund manager was able to move $312 million from Refco to a separate brokerage account at Lehman Brothers just days before Refco's $16.8 billion bankruptcy filing last October.

Fiserv Investment Support Reassigns Two Veterans

NEW YORK - Although he stopped short of declaring himself bearish, Merrill Lynch Investment Managers President and CEO Robert Doll expects a decline in the capital markets in 2006, and said that the $500 billion asset manager's plan to re-brand its retail mutual funds is moving forward.