Money Management Executive Latest News

Bank One Corporation of Chicago has announced the formation of a new business unit designed to consolidate the company's high-net-worth business. Peter Atwater, the current chief operating officer of Banc One Investment Advisors, also of Chicago, was named chief executive officer of the unit.

A number of large fund companies reduced their holdings of Microsoft during the second quarter, according to LionShares.com, a website that provides data on companies' stock holdings. Fidelity Investments of Boston sold 66 million shares, leaving it 119 million. This was the largest position change in Microsoft in the second quarter.

John Murphy has resigned as president of MassMutual Institutional Funds of Boston to join OppenheimerFunds of New York as president and chief operating officer. This is a new position and is part of a new management structure to align Oppenheimer's mutual fund and retirement businesses, said Bridget Macaskill, Oppenheimer chief executive officer, in a statement.

Churning abuses by broker/dealers usually involve variable annuities or other insurance products, which is why industry attorneys were surprised when the SEC announced last week that it had fined Dean Witter Reynolds, now part of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter of New York, nearly half a million dollars for failing to prevent mutual fund churning by one of the firm's Atlanta brokers.

Call him the Mr. Blackwell of the variable annuity industry.

A recent advertisement by Munder Capital Management of Birmingham, Mich., promoting its soon-to-be-released @Vantage fund, is a novel response to the SEC's increased demands for greater disclosure in fund advertising, fund marketing executives said.

Janus' sagging performance and Jim Craig's resignation early last month have precipitated a wave of rumors and speculation regarding the fate of the Denver-based firm.

John Hancock Financial Services of Boston is shaking up the management of its Variable Series Trust I group of variable annuities and life products. It has hired three new sub-advisers, fired another and is planning to make several other sub-adviser changes, according to recent proxy statements filed with the SEC.

Exchange-traded funds are not the only exotic new product shaking up the mutual fund industry. A new breed of customized, web-based baskets of stocks has recently come to market.

If new employees were automatically enrolled in 401(k)'s, mutual fund companies might collect assets from the 15 percent of the population that fail to sign up for 401(k)s, fund executives and consultants said.