Money Management Executive Latest News

Stull, Stull & Brody of New York has filed a class-action lawsuit with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California against Wells Fargo & Co. and its H.D. Vest Investment Services subsidiary on behalf of shareholders in Federated mutual funds.Although the suit charges that Wells Fargo had special shelf-space agreements with 19 mutual fund companies and that H.D. Vest has such agreements with 12 fund companies, it is only on behalf of investors in Federated funds.The suit charges that between June 20, 2000 and June 8, 2005, investors in those funds were steered to invest in the preferred fund families by the two firms and their brokers, who received shelf-space payments in exchange for promoting those funds, but failed to tell their clients of this potential conflict of interest. Thus, the lawsuit accuses the firm of violating federal securities laws.

Continuing a trend begun in the second half of the year, world equity funds beat out all other specialty equity sectors as the best-performing funds of 2005, Forbes reports.

Mutual fund managers have been predicting and hoping for a pick up in the growth arena for more than a year now, and finally, in 2005, growth funds are beating value, and fund managers are arguing that this new trend will continue well into 2006, according to Business Week Online."Our bet right now is on growth stocks," says Gina Sanchez, manager of the American Century Investments' Strategic Asset Allocation Funds.

In a regulatory statement, this Wednesday, Alger Funds announced that its manager received a Wells notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission on Dec. 16, 2005 for investigations having to do with fund market timing and late trading, according to MarketWatch.com.A Wells notice allows individuals to come clean in regards to accusations, before the SEC formally brings charges forth.

Brokerage industry regulator NASD has fined hedge fund manager John Mangan Jr. $125,000 on charges that he improperly traded restricted, unregistered shares, according to The New York Times.

Fidelity Investments has added two new enhancements to its Charitable Gift Fund investment pool program that are designed to provide contributors with greater diversification opportunities when they spend their charitable dollars.

London-based Old Mutual, South Africa 's largest insurer and an international asset manager, has successfully taken control of Skandia, a Swedish insurer, for $3.7 billion.

So exactly what sort of workload can the average chairman of a fund complex handle? Evidently, quite a substantial one, according to a report from The Rocky Mountain News.

Deutsche Bank Securities, the New York-based investment banking and securities unit of German colossus Deutsche Bank, has bowed to pressure from Fidelity Investments to unbundle research and trading costs, The Boston Globe reports. The news comes just two months after the Boston fund shop reached a similar, groundbreaking agreement with Lehman Brothers, another New York financial services provider.

American Funds, a division of Capital Group, has announced the opening of a funds service center, which will be located in the city of Chesapeake, Va., and will result in the creation of 250 new jobs, most with starting salaries of $30,000.