Money Management Executive Latest News

Fremont Investment Advisors, which runs the Fremont Funds, has drawn the scrutiny of regulators for market-timing arrangements the shop maintained, according to Associated Press reports.

The NASD fined Worldco LLC $1.5 million and mandated a three-year barring of its chief executive officer Monday for not separating business operations from the hedge fund PTJP Partners.

In the latest move of its kind, two veteran Morgan Stanley analysts have left the bank in favor of working in hedge funds, Reuters reports.

After the abrupt resignation of L.C. Kvaal as head of its highly successful International Small Cap Fund, Fidelity Investments has named company veteran Ben Paton his successor, Reuters reports.

Mutual fund manager J. & W. Seligman & Co is the latest firm to cop to abusive trading practices as the company admitted to having four market-timing arrangements in place in the last three years.

CINCINNATI - Although the Investment Company Institute successfully stalled the Baker Bill last spring, Congress is likely to pass and the President is likely to approve the third piece of legislation in the history of mutual funds, ICI President Matthew Fink told the Greater Cincinnati Mutual Funds Association Thursday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer are now investigating banks and specifically whether certain banks violated securities laws by extending credit to cash-loaded improper traders like hedge funds, according to published reports.

Maligned fund giant Invesco suffered another blow Friday when Standard Chartered announced it would stop selling Invesco mutual funds, Reuters reports.

Raymond James owes clients an estimated $6.9 million for failure to apply the appropriate breakpoint discounts, some $3.6 million of which it will recover from financial advisers at Raymond James & Associates and its independent broker/dealer, Raymond James Financial Services. The company said it might also be on the hook for penalties of up to $6.5 million for related enforcement actions by the SEC and the NASD.

In the wake of a massive settlement that forced Alliance Capital to lower mutual fund fees, an increasing number of fund shops, most notably MFS Investments, are cutting back operating expenses charged to shareholders.