Money Management Executive Latest News

No-load firm Value Line Funds of New York, wants to add a 25 basis point 12b-1 fee to 10 funds to increase advertising for the funds and to offset the costs of mutual fund supermarkets, said David Henigson, a vice president with the firm.

James Mehling, a former vice president of New York Life Insurance Company in New York, last week filed a class action lawsuit, charging that New York Life improperly shifted assets held in both a company-sponsored pension plan and a 401(k) plan and used them as seed money for new proprietary institutional mutual funds.

The SEC will review the auditor independence rules of the top five accounting firms, the SEC has announced.

SEI Investments Canada of Toronto is getting out of the pension fund consulting and data business because it wants to focus on its asset management business, the company has announced.

Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP of New York has filed a class action lawsuit in New York Supreme Court against Prudential Securities and affiliates of the AEGON group of companies on behalf of investors who purchased annuities used to fund qualified retirement plans.

Some mutual fund directors are chronically absent from fund board meetings, according to a top SEC official.

Charles "Ted" Bauer, co-founder and chairman of AIM Management Group and AIM Funds of Houston, will retire at the end of this year. Bauer, Robert H. Graham, AIM's chief ex ecutive officer, and Gary T. Crum, AIM Capital Management's president, founded the firm in 1976.

The Investment Company Institute has criticized an SEC proposal that would require investment advisers to disclose custodian and administrative fees, soft dollars and disciplinary actions against them.

BOSTON - Funds must develop innovative sales strategies through new channels if they want to counter rising costs and increased competition in fund supermarkets, according to industry executives.

NEW YORK - Although for the second year in a row, money market mutual funds attracted more than half of net new money going into mutual funds last year, their rate of growth may begin to taper off, said Peter Crane, vice president and managing editor of iMoneyNet of Westborough, Mass.