Money Management Executive Latest News

Inflows into equity funds in April were not quite as high as was predicted. However, considering April’s market declines, they were still encouraging. Stock funds had an inflow of $11.76 billion in April, according to the Investment Company Institute. In March, equity funds had inflows of $29.63 billion.

Patrick Welch will resign from his position as chairman, president and CEO of the National Life Group, a cluster of financial services and insurance companies that includes the Sentinel Family of Mutual Funds. Welch is leaving the company to become president of CIGNA HealthCare.

The mutual fund industry’s chief lobby group has sent a letter to a committee of the New York Stock Exchange suggesting that shareholders should have a say in the authorization of stock option plans for workers.

Mutual fund distribution platforms are booming in Germany, accounting for 18% of net new inflows into funds in that country last year, says fund research Cerulli Associates in a recent study.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has taken action to authorize the industry’s first fixed income exchange-traded funds at an open meeting today. Until now, ETFs have been based only on equity indexes.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Investment Company Institute's 2002 General Membership Meeting opened last week with a discussion of changing investor priorities and how mutual funds can respond. Recent events - most notably the market downturn and events of September 11 - have caused investors to become less certain about the future and more risk averse, and as their overall priorities are changing, so is their spending and investment behavior, according to industry executives.

Chapman Capital Management said today that it will begin a national radio campaign to promote a domestic emerging markets fund.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Investment Company Institute's 2002 General Membership Meeting opened last week with a discussion of changing investor priorities and how mutual funds can respond. Recent events - most notably the market downturn and events of September 11 - have caused investors to become less certain about the future and more risk averse, and as their overall priorities are changing, so is their spending and investment behavior, according to industry executives.

Mutual fund companies distributing investment content to broker/dealers have not had success convincing them to retrieve it off their Web sites. Broker/dealers are insisting that fund companies individually deliver such information as fund prices, performance, market materials and fact sheets to their own Web sites, and these individual extranets are proving costly for fund firms.

Morgan Stanley laid off roughly 50 workers among its mutual fund wholesaling and marketing teams this month in what some believe to be cost-cutting measures due to redundancies. Others say Morgan Stanley has made the cuts due to a new, generalist sales approach. The firm, which is based in New York, declined to comment.