Money Management Executive Latest News

Understanding mutual fund statements should be a heck of a lot easier now that federal regulators have okayed new disclosure rules that would spell out more clearly the fees imposed on shareholders.

Fifteen brokerages settled with the SEC and NASD for $21.5 million for not providing customers with $86 million worth of breakpoint discounts they were owed. The deal, struck earlier this month, also requires the firms to repay investors what they are owed.

Franklin Resources' legal problems were extended to the tune of a massive class-action lawsuit filed by California investors.

Registering with the SEC should not be a requirement of hedge funds, at least not in the mind of Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

It is said that the only constant is change. The past year has illustrated this point in the financial services industry, having brought conditions and concerns to light that are dramatically changing how fund firms do business. Eliot Spitzer's exposure of illegal and questionable business practices and the SEC's and NASD's investigations into breakpoint issues have resulted in rapid changes throughout the mutual fund industry.

There is something to be said for being in the right place at the right time. E*Trade Group announced an initiative to partially refund 12b-1 fees to investors using its service last summer, and the firm now has in place a rebate program pertaining to one of the hottest topics in the fund industry.

Insurance company executives are going through a lot of contortions to make money in the variable insurance business today.

With trillions - that's trillions with a T' - of dollars in assets at stake, forward-looking mutual fund companies are honing their marketing efforts and developing improved products to take advantage of the coming boom in IRA rollovers. But in the quest to capture rollover assets from 401(k)s and other qualified retirement plans, the "transfer of assets" process is a weak link for many fund firms. Across the industry, the cumbersome process creates the potential for delays in transfers between custodians, misallocations in new accounts, possible shareholder gain/loss issues and other errors that can undermine customer relationships and hinder business growth.

T. Rowe Tabs Miller Director Fixed-Income, Reynolds to Retire in April

New York -- The stakes are definitely higher today for all of those involved in sponsoring, managing and distributing tax-favored 529 college savings plans. That was the consensus among a panel of experts and members of the recently formed not-for-profit College Savings Foundation (CSF) here in New York at a media conference earlier this month.