Money Management Executive Latest News

The NASD has fined Hantz Financial Services $675,000 and its CEO another $25,000 for fraud and misrepresentations relating to undisclosed revenue-sharing arrangements, along with other violations.

The former chief executive of OppenheimerFunds parent Mass Mutual Financial Group, Robert O'Connell, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. O'Connell was fired from the firm in June on grounds of misconduct.

Even with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer breathing down their necks on Sept. 3, 2003, leading mutual fund industry executives were assuring Money Management Executive that Canary Capital's market timing and late trading was merely a case of a few bad apples.

At a time when some state municipalities are adding new 529 plan options for investors, the Department of Higher Education of New Mexico has done just the opposite.

New Mexico is not the only state forced to pare back 529 providers, due to Schoolhouse Capital's recent exit from the college savings market. In fact, Oregon has had to twice revamp its 529 plan within the past two years due to unusual circumstances.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged four brokers and a day trader for improperly using a squawk box.

Fidelity Investments has partnered with several Wall Street firms, including Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston and Lehman Brokers, to revamp the Boston Stock Exchange, turning the 170-year-old mart into an electronic network rivaling the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, the Boston Globe reported last week.

The latest news out of Washington has President Bush's top Social Security adviser playing to Democrats in the hopes that the administration can slip its controversial private accounts into the program's reform plan.

According to new figures from the Investment Company Institute, worldwide mutual fund assets for the first quarter of 2005 were $16.3 trillion, or about the same level they were last year.

The U.S. fund Lone Star has reportedly appointed Citigroup to sell its 51% venture in Korea Exchange Bank, according to an Aug. 18 report from Reuters.