Strong Fund Investors to Finally Receive $154 Million Settlement

Five years in the making, it appears that Strong Funds investors who were harmed by mutual fund market timing may soon receive their share of the $154 million settlement.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has published a disbursement proposal for the 24 funds affected on its website that was devised by independent consultant Michael R. Gibbons, a finance professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

The plan notes that the original settlement, reached with Strong Capital Management, its former CEO Richard S. Strong, and executives Thomas A. Hooker, Jr. and Anthony J. D’Amato was for $140 million, but with interest, it has grown to $154 million.

While other investors have long since been repaid from damages done to their returns from market timing, the Strong case was complicated, explained Robert J. Burson, associate regional director of the SEC’s Chicago office.