Money Management Executive Latest News

Liberty Financial Companies of Boston appears to be struggling to find a buyer for its asset management units and may have to drop its asking price in order to secure a buyer, according to industry analysts.

Currently, mutual fund supermarkets in Europe represent only about one percent of net new flows into European funds. However, as the European fund industry continues to develop, fund supermarkets there will become a crucial distribution channel, according to a report that will be released later this month by the London office of Cerulli Associates of Boston.

Enterprise Group of Funds' new print advertisement is far from a typical mutual fund marketing campaign. In fact, it looks more like a prize a kid would pull from a box of Cracker Jack.

Trustees of the Growth and Income Portfolio, an open-end institutional fund managed by J.P. Morgan Chase of New York, are awarding themselves nearly $11 million from a trustee retirement plan it terminated in February, according to a preliminary proxy statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Nationwide Financial Services of Columbus, Ohio has come up with an innovative approach to providing asset management services to publicly-held 401(k) sponsors that allows employees to actively trade shares of their employers' stock within their 401(k) plans.

The 12b-1 fees funds imposed in flush times to compensate brokers for the sale of B shares could begin to haunt fund firms, now that the markets have turned bearish.

Stephen Cone is the head of global marketing for Citigroup Asset Management and Private Banking at Citigroup of New York and formerly the president of customer marketing and development at Fidelity Investments of Boston. Cone recently discussed his goals for Citigroup Asset Management as well as overall mutual fund marketing with Mutual Fund Market News reporter Andrew Brent. An edited account of their conversation follows.

Income-trust mutual funds, a small but growing asset class in Canada, are about to get a higher profile with the launch of an income trust index by a unit of Standard & Poor's.

Michael Perez recently became president of Emplanet, a provider of automated 401(k) services based in Westborough, Mass. Perez gained prominence in the 401(k) industry as a senior executive for Fidelity Investments' Retirement Service Company in Boston. As a Fidelity senior vice president of sales, he sold plans to companies such as Shell Oil, United Airlines and John Deere and maintained total assets of $20 billion. At the start of his 15-year tenure at Fidelity, he played a key role in the development of bundled 401(k) services, which quickly became an industry standard, according to Emplanet. He was also in the forefront of Fidelity's entry into pension and health and welfare administration in the early 1990s as well as its payroll and human resources information services programs. Before joining Fidelity, he was assistant vice president for the Northern Trust Corporation, where he performed investment analysis. He spoke with freelance reporter John P. Mello Jr. on issues affecting the 401(k) industry.

Evergreen Investments of Charlotte, N.C. has added five new share classes to its four institutional money market funds, bringing the total number of share classes it offers on the funds to seven, according to the company.