Money Management Executive Latest News

The Vanguard Group's decision to issue a new exchange-traded share class on six of its index funds represents a milestone in the evolution of exchange-traded funds and will popularize them with investors interested in short-term trading and fund companies interested in offering them, said mutual fund executives.

WASHINGTON, D.C.-While the mutual fund industry continued its strong growth in 1999, the Internet has empowered individual investors and unforeseen competitors to challenge the industry's continued strength, said executives at the annual meeting of the Investment Company Institute here last week.

States and municipalities are adding defined contribution plans to their retirement programs largely because of the fund and insurance industries' intense lobbying and despite the fact that there is virtually no demand for the option from state employees, said pension plan and public sector executives.

Executives at the Pioneer Group of Boston are hoping that the firm's planned sale to one of Italy's largest banks will expand Pioneer's distribution abroad and its services in the U.S.

BOSTON - The SEC's goal of providing final rules regarding director independence by this summer could be in jeopardy.

NEW YORK - The mutual fund industry has "lost its way" by caring more about boosting assets under management to raise fees, and therefore profits, for the investment adviser, instead of focusing on long-term performance in the best interest of shareholders, said John Bogle, founder and former senior chairman of the Vanguard Group of Malvern, Pa. Bogle is now president of the Bogle Financial Markets Research Center, also of Malvern.

In Baltimore, a city where Legg Mason and T. Rowe Price Associates are the standards in money management, a lesser know fund family is trying to make some noise.

Becoming senior vice president of retail fund marketing and electronic commerce for Liberty Funds Distributors of Boston attracted Karl Schofield because it afforded him the opportunity to become involved in all aspects of marketing Stein Roe funds, a brand he feels has strong growth prospects. In addition to traditional marketing communications, Schofield will head up changes planned for both www.steinroe.com and younginvestor.com.

Testifying before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Banking and Financial Services, Norman Sorenson, president of Principal Financial's international division, called for an upgrade in China's trade status so the U.S. financial services industry can tap China's pension and retirement markets.

Brazil has been consolidating its position in Latin America as the region's largest investment fund industry. With over 100 fund managers, and assets amounting to R$238 billion (US$132.4 billion), the industry has already recorded growth of R$25.6 billion or 12 percent this year alone, with nearly half of that total corresponding to the net inflow of investment for the period, according to data provided by the National Association of Investment Banks.