Money Management Executive Latest News

Oppenheimer Funds of New York has created a new retirement share class, "Class N", that will charge investors an additional 45 basis points to help cover the traditional one percent finder's fee paid to brokers.

SAN DIEGO, Calif. - The challenge of labor recruitment and retention facing companies in the new economy was one of the major topics of discussion at the 2000 Operations Conference of the Investment Company Institute of Washington D.C. here last week.

Zurich On-Line Financing, a subsidiary of Zurich Financial Services Group of Zurich, Switz., plans to form a new investment management company and introduce an interval fund exclusively for wealthy investors, with Thomas Weisel Partners, a merchant bank in San Francisco. Zurich Financial is also the parent of Scudder Kemper Investments of New York.

NEW YORK - Although the competitive environment in the fund industry has strongly favored large fund companies that have million dollar marketing budgets, small and mid-size firms are using the Internet to increase sales, develop brand identity and improve their efficiencies, according to fund executives who spoke at a conference on e-distribution and marketing of mutual funds here last week.

NEW YORK - Fund companies need to develop an online strategy to help financial intermediaries use the web as a tool to service their clients and develop closer relationships with them in addition to using the traditional methods of fund distribution, according to industry executives. The executives spoke at a conference here last week on electronic distribution and marketing for mutual funds sponsored by the Institute for International Research of New York.

It is likely that more mutual funds will be liquidated this year than ever before, according to a study by Wiesenberger, Thomson Financial of Rockville, Md., a mutual fund tracking service. The record for the number of funds liquidated in one year, set in 1998, is 222. If the pace set so far this year is sustained, over 260 funds will be liquidated in 2000, according to the study. This assumes that as has occurred in the past ten years, over fifty percent of fund liquidations will occur in the last quarter of the year, according to the study. Wiesenberger is a division of Thomson Financial, the publisher of this newsletter.

Nuveen Investments of Chicago and Epoch Partners, an investment banking firm in San Francisco, announced plans last week to introduce two more exchange-traded funds. Nuveen also announced that it is developing an actively-managed exchange-traded fund. Nuveen does not yet know whether it will introduce a single actively-managed exchange-traded fund or several of them, said Laurel O'Brien, a spokesperson for Nuveen.

TORONTO - Currently, there is no standardized fund regulation in Canada and many fund complexes are structured as trusts, overseen by trustees, who use an advisory regulatory model. The advisory board offers guidance but has no decision-making authority over the fund complex. Altamira and Royal Mutual Funds currently use this model.

In an unusual joint proxy statement filed Oct. 11, Credit Suisse Asset Management of New York, the adviser to the closed-end Indonesia Fund and NAM-USA, the manager of the closed-end Jakarta Growth Fund, announced plans to seek shareholder approval to merge the two geographically related but separately-managed funds. NAM-U.S.A. is the U.S. subsidiary of Nomura Asset Management of Tokyo.

Liberty Financial of Boston is asking shareholders of its Liberty Newport Global Equity Fund to approve plans to liquidate the fund and merge it with the Liberty Newport Global Utility Fund, according to a preliminary proxy statement filed with the SEC Oct. 12.