Money Management Executive Latest News

Leon Levy, 77, founder of Oppenheimer Funds and chairman of the fund's New York board has retired. Effective on the first of this month, Clayton K. Yeutter, a trustee of the New York Board for more than two decades, will assume chairmanship. Currently, Yeutter is a counsel to Hogan & Hartson, one of the nation's largest law firms. He was a U.S. Trade Representative in the late 80's and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture in the early 90's. Earlier in his career, he was president and CEO of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

FT Interactive Data, the major operating division of Interactive Data Corp., has promoted Robert A. Leone to the position of senior director of global relationships. Before joining FT, he was partner at Global Investor Publishing, and prior to that, he served at Thomson Financial, primarily with First Call, in various senior positions including senior VP of international operations. (Thomson Financial is a sister company to Thomson Media, publisher of this newsletter.)

At a special stockholders' meeting of three PIMCO funds last month, Salomon Brothers Asset Management assumed all management of the Emerging Markets Floating Rate Fund, Global Partners Fund and Municipal Partners Fund II.

The National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) has warned brokers to be more diligent about granting breakpoints to mutual fund customers. Such breakpoints, set by mutual fund companies to reduce front-end sales loads from several basis to several percentage points, generally occur at the $50,000, $100,000, $250,000 and other high marks, sometimes even reducing front-end fees to zero on share purchases of $1 million or more.

The U.S. Treasury Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System have recommended to Congress ways to apply anti-money laundering regulations to mutual fund companies. The recommendations are intended to comply with the Patriot Act, aimed at cracking down on the financial networks of terrorists.

Morningstar has named managers at Fidelity, Julius Baer and Dodge & Cox as Fund Managers of the Year.

In what looks like a push to concentrate on well-established, asset-loaded firms, and on the heels of several articles in the press saying Vanguard is going after more affluent clientele, the firm has cut back on services to advisers with less than $5 million in custody with the company.

The Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday said Charles D. Niemeier would serve as acting chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, replacing William Webster, who resigned.

WASHINGTON – Four former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission said yesterday that directors of mutual fund boards need to do a far better job of monitoring the funds they oversee and prevent the kind of fraud that has run rampant on Wall Street the past year.

The Investment Company Institute has commended the SEC and the NASD for their recent warnings against brokers. The NASD recently issued a letter to members warning them to pass along breakpoint discounts to large mutual fund customers (see www.mfmarketnews.com 01/07/03).