Money Management Executive Latest News

A financial services marketing consultant I talk with from time to time has a succinct way of stating the obvious when it comes to mutual fund advertising: What have you done for me lately?

"Friends" and the rest of the season premieres for the new fall television lineup are back, so New York Life Insurance Co. figured now would be a good time to launch a $43 million ad campaign.

A glitzy multimedia component is part of a new ad campaign that load shop Pioneer Investment Management of Boston, Mass., has just unveiled. The thrust of the campaign, whose heading could simply be called "Trust," is to encourage investors whose nerves have been frayed by corporate scandals and rocky markets to turn to trusted financial advisers.

The Dreyfus Corp.'s ferocious feline mascot is back in action in a trio of all-new national advertisements. One print ad and two 30-second TV spots are scheduled to run into 2003.

Lipper and Barra have partnered to create new software that helps mutual funds assess the risk involved with investing in certain securities, the companies said this week.

Administration and distribution services provider BISYS has expanded its insurance unit by acquiring First Northern Financial Resources, Inc., an insurance brokerage firm that distributes wholesale life insurance and annuities. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Massachusetts Securities Division has filed an official complaint against a Denver, Co. brokerage operator, alleging that he and his organization tried to scare elderly people into abandoning their securities in favor of annuities with outrageous commissions.

Although equity mutual fund panic selling abated in August, thanks to a sideways market, and investors continued to flock to bond funds, sharp withdrawals from money market funds netted the industry a $23.3 billion loss of assets last month, Lipper revealed today.

Investors who weren't already superstitious after suffering a year of brutal markets had good reason to believe in voodoo this month. The Morningstar Web site, which is widely used by investors to pick funds, was grossly inaccurate on, of all days, Friday the 13th.

Joseph Carrier, vice president and treasurer of the T. Rowe Price Funds, weighed in on a number of subjects concerning the industry during a recent interview with Mutual Fund Market News Associate Editor Chris Frankie. Carrier, chairman of the Investment Company Institute's Accounting/Treasurers Committee, also spoke about some of the topics to be discussed at the ICI 2002 Tax & Accounting Conference in Palm Desert, Calif., this week.