Money Management Executive Latest News

Putnam Investments announced last Tuesday that it had hired the president and chief executive officer of Delaware Investments and its parent, Lincoln National Investments Co., to be its co-head of investments.

Along with electing Paul G. Haaga, Jr. its new chairman (see story, page 1), the Investment Company Institute has named 17 other key executives in the mutual fund industry to the Board of Governors. The following 15 individuals have been elected to three-year terms ending Sept. 30, 2005, and the last two are filling vacant positions:

Orbitex Group of Funds plans to sell all of its assets to Saratoga Capital Manage-ment in return for a 50% interest in a new company known as Orbitex-Saratoga Asset Management, according to an SEC filing.

American Century has announced that by early next year, it will offer 10 of its mutual funds only through financial advisers.

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July

An industry as competitive and highly regulated as the mutual fund industry could not possibly slip one by investors, right?

We may not have a double-dip recession, but the economy isn't out of the woods yet, believes Alan Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price of Baltimore.

The bear market, a steep decline in mutual fund and variable annuity sales and the strain of product guarantees, will result in widespread downgrades at life insurance and annuity companies, all of the major ratings agencies have announced,

The bear market isn't mauling everyone. Sign-on bonuses for top performers at leading mutual fund and brokerage firms "are now as high as the signing bonuses some professional sports teams pay for star athletes," notes Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, in his new book, Take on the Street (see interview, page 2).