Money Management Executive Latest News

Morgan Stanley is seeking to merge three of its smaller funds into larger offerings, according to documents filed today with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The three funds that would be merged, provided shareholders approve the proposal, are the Morgan Stanley S&P Select Fund, the Morgan Stanley Competitive Edge Best Ideas Fund and the Morgan Stanley Capital Growth Securities fund.

Neuberger Berman has hired Marvin Demoff as the managing director of its asset management group that handles investments for professional athletes.

Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, a division of Merrill Lynch responsible for the firm’s proprietary mutual funds, reported pretax operating earnings for the fourth quarter of 2001 of $48 million on revenues of $489 million. Earnings for the quarter were down 61% than year earlier figures while revenues were 22% lower than in 2000.

Equity funds posted modest inflows of just less than $2 billion in December, a substantial decline from the previous month when investors socked more than $10 billion into the products, according to fund researcher Lipper.

Eaton Vance Distributors has hired three regional directors and three internal wholesalers for its managed account sales and marketing group, the firm announced today. Last year, Eaton Vance Corp. began an initiative to dramatically grow it separately managed account business. Last September, it acquired Fox Asset Management and Atlanta Capital Management Co., both of which serve that market.

In the wake of Enron's debacle, the Financial Planning Association wants President George W. Bush to allow 401(k) participants to diversify their holdings out of company stock.

As banking companies expand their asset management businesses, some are feeling more comfortable giving them the parent company’s brand name or something similar.

The increasing cost of insurance coverage has forced Vanguard to drop a requirement on six of its municipal bond funds that mandates them to invest a minimum percentage of assets in insured municipal bond issues. As a result, the firm is changing the funds’ names, dropping the word "insured" out of the funds’ monikers.

Los Angeles-based Transamerica Investment Management has hired a former Janus executive to oversee the development of an institutional sales team and expand the company’s distribution efforts, Transamerica said today.

There were 543 cases filed in 2001 with the NASD Dispute Resolution arbitration forum that alleged problems with mutual funds, according to statistics released today. That’s an increase of more than 108% from 2000, when 261 such cases were filed.