Money Management Executive Latest News

Juan Marcelino announced yesterday that in light of the maelstrom whirling around the mutual fund industry, he is stepping down as district administrator of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Boston office.

WASHINGTON – The crusade against mutual fund firms for ripping off customers took a major step forward Monday as New York’s top regulator fired a shot across the bow.

Prudential Securities wasn’t told once. It wasn’t told twice. It wasn’t told three times. Mutual fund companies sent the brokerage firm more than 25,000 letters asking it to stop market timing, Massachusetts regulators are expected to charge as early as today, The Wall Street Journal reports. The allegations could result in charges of civil securities fraud.

Instead of earning airline miles or cash back for cardholders, a new credit card introduced by William Blair & Co. and MBNA filters customer rebates into clients’ securities and mutual fund accounts.

In the latest sign that separate accounts are truly going mainstream, Morningstar launched a new star rating system for the investment class Thursday. Some said the new service could ramp up interest in the already rapidly growing separate accounts industry – particularly at a time when mutual funds are engulfed in a regulatory scandal.

New York State Attorney Eliot Spitzer threw another barb at the Securities and Exchange Commission, on the eve of the showdown this week on Capitol Hill – this one apparently directed at Paul Roye, director of the Division of Investment Management.

Eliot Spitzer wants to make sure the mutual fund industry’s laws get changed. So he’s going to the epicenter of where laws get changed: Washington D.C. There, the New York attorney general will take the industry’s annual $70 billion in fees to task.

Larry Lasser, the 18-year CEO of Putnam Investments, has agreed to resign, the firm’s parent company, Marsh & McLennan, announced this morning. He will be replaced by Charles Haldeman, now CEO and president. A.J.C. Smith becomes chairman. The news came as a result of an emergency board meeting early this morning.

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