Money Management Executive Latest News

Three mutual funds have drawn the Securities and Exchange Commission’s ire for alleged violations resembling the accounting sins committed by Bridgeway Capital Management, Bloomberg News reports.

New SEC regulations resulting from the fund scandal and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act will cost mutual fund companies millions of dollars as a result of the need to hire thousands of additional lawyers, chief compliance officers, accountants, tech personnel and independent directors, the Boston Herald reports.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is reconsidering its proposal to require funds to impose a 2% redemption fee on shares sold within five days of purchase, The Wall Street Journal reports. Of the 280 comment letters the SEC has received on this proposal, 250 are against it, citing increased costs for investors, the difficulty of implementing since many funds are held through retirement or omnibus accounts and the inappropriateness of a government body to set fees.

Memories of losses during the bear market of the early 2000s, the fund scandal and heavy-hitting new legislation have made investors nervous. As a result, investment companies around the world are scrambling to restructure, a new report finds.

The National Retirement Planning Coalition plans a media campaign for Nov. 14 through Nov. 19, which is National Retirement Planning Week. This is the third year that the group, whose membership includes the National Association for Variable Annuities, has sponsored the event, and the second year that Ben Stein has been involved.

The SEC has charged RS Investment Management (RSIM), CEO Randall Hecht and Steven Cohen, former chief financial officer, with allowing certain mutual fund investors to market time the firm’s funds. These investors profited from the trades, potentially at the expense of other shareholders, and RSIM was able to earn "substantial advisory fees."

The increases in compensation for individuals who sell wholesale investment products nearly doubled from 2002 to 2003, according to a recent survey.

Amid an uptick in the stock market, 2003 was also a year in which 401(k) plan participation increased slightly, a recent survey finds.

AIM Investments Chief Investment Officer Ed Larsen has taken a leave of absence to resolve regulators’ inquiries into his role in market timing violations at the firm, the company announced in a letter to shareholders on its Web site Monday. Larsen made the request on his own, the company said.

Eliot Spitzer’s crusade to clean up the mutual fund industry is far from over. The determined New York attorney general, who has arrested eight fund employees and put one behind bars as part of a widespread investigation of trading abuses, asserted that there is more work to be done, Bloomberg reports