Money Management Executive Latest News

Recent cutbacks made at Janus of Denver highlight the change underway in how investors and mutual fund companies interact. On Feb. 2, Janus announced that it was eliminating 468 jobs from Janus Service Corporation, the firm's operational unit. That represents 22 percent of the unit and 16 percent of Janus' overall workforce, according to Shelley Peterson, a spokesperson for Janus.

Whatifi Asset Management of San Francisco, the manger to the five fledgling Whatifi online mutual funds, is receiving an unspecified cash infusion as part of a second-round financing agreement with CIBC Capital Partners, a New York venture capital firm and a unit of CIBC World Markets of Toronto.

A pension reform bill that would increase retirement savings contribution limits and streamline the process for setting up retirement plans for small businesses will be introduced in the House of Representatives this week, according to Elizabeth Gregory, a spokesperson for The Financial Services Roundtable of Washington, D.C., a financial services company association.

Small business owners prefer financial advisors who they perceive to be independent of product providers, according to a recent online study by Brightwork Partners of Greenwich, Conn. and Greenfield Online of Wilton, Conn.

Fidelity Investments of Boston has filed a preliminary proxy statement

Jodie Hale has been named vice president for retirement plans marketing for Pioneer Investments of Boston. Hale was previously at Nvest of Boston for eight years.

When the Vanguard Group of Malvern, Pa. began offering its Admiral shares in November, it did so claiming it wanted to reward its largest, most loyal investors. But the product is more likely designed to prevent shareholders from straying to exchange-traded funds, according to industry observers.

If the experience one shareholder communications company has had in convincing fund companies to begin offering shareholder documents electronically is indicative of industry attitudes overall, it would appear mutual funds would rather use the post office.

Net cash flows into stock mutual funds set a record in 2000, when $309.3 billion flowed into the funds, surpassing the previous record of $227.1 billion set in 1997 by over 36 percent and 1999's total of $187.7 billion by nearly 65 percent, according to the Investment Company Institute of Washington, D.C.

Lance Brofman, a former principal of Fundamental Portfolio Advisors, a now defunct mutual fund group in New York, has been fined $250,000 by an SEC administrative law judge in New York and barred for life from associating with a broker/dealer, investment adviser or investment company.