Now It’s Personal With the SEC

Most of the mutual fund scandal’s widest ranging investigations have been into fund firms themselves, but now the Securities and Exchange Commission is concentrating on the more prominent faces that help run these companies: Fund managers. Specifically, the Commission wants to see if the managers traded improperly with their own companies’ shares.

The New York Post reports that as part of its regular probes into companies, the SEC will examine the trading tabs of fund managers and all other employees considered having "inside" access. The move represents a shift from simple checks of stock and bond deals toward a look into which people may have made fund trades based on knowledge of the fund’s holdings.

Already, Putnam, Invesco and Prudential brokers have been charged by the SEC and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s office for market timing within their own funds.

Earlier this month, SEC chief William Donaldson said the Commission was mulling over a rule proposal that would make fund managers’ disclosure of their personal trades within their funds mandatory.

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