Money Management Executive Latest News

Smith Barney Fund Management, in a filing with the SEC Friday, has recommended that shareholders of the closed-end, $34.6 million Italy Fund liquidate the fund at a Jan. 30 meeting.

Vanguard issued a timely release this week laying out a nine-step program for investors to take charge of their financial lives in 2003.

Morningstar has named managers at Fidelity, Julius Baer and at Dodge & Cox as fund managers of 2002.

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, which was signed by President Bush in October of 2001. The act directed the Treasury to expand money-laundering rules in an effort to crack down on the financial networks of terrorists.

In what looks like a push to concentrate on well-established, asset-loaded firms, Vanguard has cut back on services to advisers with less than $5 million in custody with the company.

ING Investment Management announced Monday that it has set up the first foreign joint venture fund company in China. ING said it acted in partnership with China Merchants Securities Co. to open the China Merchants Fund Management Co., based in Shenzhen. ING owns 30% of the venture but said it would like to increase its stake. The most that foreigners can own of a fund company in China is 33%, but the allowed stake is to rise to 49% in late 2005. China Merchants Securities of Beijing owns 40% of the venture and is to choose its chief executive officer. Three other partners, China Power Finance, China Huaneng Finance, and Cosco Finance, each own 10%.

Some Foresee Tech Ceasing Its Run as a Four-Letter Word

Americans did not wake up at the beginning of the 1990s and decide to run with the bulls. A combination of collectively innovative minds brought the power of mutual fund investing to the American public.

With a possible war with Iraq looming and a spectacular terrorist catastrophic follow-up embedded in the consciousness of many investors, the mutual fund market appears cloudy, at best, for 2003.

Talk about going out and seeing America.