Money Management Executive Latest News

Lars Soderberg, executive vice president of institutional services and member of the management committee at Janus Capital, has agreed to take a leave of absence from the company. In the mean time, Janus said, it "will continue to evaluate Soderberg's future role with the company, in light of the ongoing investigation of the mutual fund industry and related regulatory matters."

To spot and stymie potential wrongdoing, pay closer attention to the inner workings of fund management companies, Paul Roye, director of the division of investment management at the SEC, recently told a group of new mutual fund directors.

Employees of maligned fund giant Putnam Investments tiptoed around company procedures in the area of expense payments, several Putnam funds admitted in a series of disclosures to shareholders.

New Prez at Double Alpha; Chender Named to Post

The Great Wall doesn't seem as insurmountable as it once did, as China and its Asian neighbors are rolling back barriers, letting Western companies penetrate their fund markets.

Two Morgan Stanley employees were dismissed last month from a branch office in Baltimore that has recently become the subject of an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Associated Press reported.

Many mutual fund shareholders were pleasantly surprised in April by plentiful embedded losses in their investments. Capital gains paid by mutual funds slumped in 2003 to an estimated $14 billion, the lowest level since 1990, according to a study by the Investment Company Institute. Flagging capital gain payments are the result of previous back-to-back bear market years in which funds racked up sizeable losses.

Putnam Investments agreed to pay $110 million for its mutual fund trading misdeeds on Wednesday, settling on an amount far less than what regulators indicated they would seek if the case went to litigation.

The Senate Banking Committee, concluding its 10th hearing yesterday on the mutual fund scandal, may not introduce new regulations for the mutual fund industry but allow the new SEC regulations to kick in, the New York Post reports.

Janus paid lofty bonuses to its senior executives last year despite the company's abysmal corporate governance during that period