Money Management Executive Latest News

The Securities and Exchange Commission has hired Brian G. Cartwright, 58, as general counsel, succeeding Giovanni Prezioso, who recently announced he would be leaving the Commission to return to private practice. Cartwright, who will assume his new position on Jan. 23, is currently a partner with Latham & Watkins. He has been a lawyer since 1980, when he graduated from Harvard Law School, and was previously an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley. He graduated from Yale University in 1967 with a Ph.D. in physics.

Mellon Financial Corporation is forming a joint venture with WestLB AG, called WestLB Mellon Asset Management, and it will be launched in the first quarter of 2006. It will employ approximately 240 people and will have about $47.5 billion in assets under management.

After all the recent scandals, one would think that investors would have become more knowledgeable about financial matters. However, many investors are ignorant when it comes to financial matters and are actually extremely careless when it comes to their money, a recent study by Securities Industry and Protection Corp. (SIPC) and the Investors Protection Trust reveals, according to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

As mutual funds continue to grow, more funds are charging lower fees to investors, and some industry watchers say it's about time, USA Today reports.

The case for closer scrutiny of the hedge fund industry got even tighter last week when yet another adviser was charged with illegal trading activity.

Toronto financial services giant Oppenheimer Holdings was fined $4.4 million on Friday to settle charges brought by the U.S. Treasury Department, the New York Stock Exchange and the NASD.

Legg Mason's Bill Miller may have closed 2005 with a record 15th consecutive year of beating the S&P 500 with his Value Trust Fund, but another money manager is being lauded as this year's best stock-picker.

Baltimore's second most popular streak continued on Friday.

The results, or should we say returns, are nearly all in and it appears that mid-cap funds finally unseated small-cap funds, which ruled the industry for more than five years.

Four “ultra” ProFunds exchange-traded funds, which aim to produce 200% of their stock benchmarks, paid out capital gains distributions of $3.80 to $6.80 a share last week, The Wall Street Journal reports.