Regulation

The distributor and investment advisor for the Franklin Templeton family of mutual funds has agreed to pay $20 million to settle charges that they made ill use of brokerage commissions.

Fidelity Investments is gearing up for a fight with federal regulators now questioning a business relationship between a pair of siblings who handle a fraction of the fund giant's trading business. Fidelity trader David K. Donovan and his younger brother, Peter Donovan, an employee of Bank of American Securities, are under investigation for forging an improper business relationship, attorneys close to the case told The Boston Globe last week.

Say it ain't so, Fido.

The largest scandal in the mutual fund industry's 80-year history has prompted regulators to revamp how funds conduct business by implementing a series of reforms. Dozens of firms have been sued and accused of fraud, a handful of executives are facing criminal charges and investors have realized how little they really know about how their retirement dollars are being invested.

First Command Financial Services, a leading seller of financial products to military personnel, agreed last Wednesday to pay $12 million to settle allegations that it used shady sales practices to pitch mutual funds to thousands of enlisted men and women over the last five years.

SEC Governor Cynthia Glassman once again spoke out vehemently against the Commission's new rule that will require fund boards to have independent chairmen. "This debate is not over," she said, referring to a lawsuit that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has brought against the SEC and a request by Congress for the Commission to look at the effects of the new rule.

Soon to retire Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) recently applauded the efforts of federal securities regulators for their continuing efforts to enact a series of mutual fund reforms that benefit individual investors.

The NASD has come down on 29 broker/dealers for more than 8,000 instances of failing to disclose reportable information to customers. The firms have neither admitted to nor denied allegations, but consented to the entry of the findings. Reportable information includes customer complaints, regulatory actions, criminal charges and convictions.

Two attacks on the SEC's requirement for independent board chairmen are unlikely to topple the hotly contested rule, industry insiders say, and like it or not, funds run by outsiders could find their fees, and therefore their profits, reduced. But one ploy that could result would be a delay past the current Jan. 16, 2006 deadline for funds to install independent chairmen.

Paul Roye, director of the SEC's division of investment management, recently indicated that clearly defining what can be exchanged between brokers and fund companies through soft dollars will be a priority of the Commission in 2005. Speaking before the Consumer Federation of America, Roye said that this will be a "front-burner" priority, one that will probably be resolved by limiting the definition of "research."