Regulation

Warning: A large diet of initial public offerings may be hazardous to your investment health.

The SEC is prepared to look back before Dec. 8 to sue mutual fund companies if the agency finds apparent violations of the pricing policies outlined in a letter the agency issued last month.

The SEC is considering a rule change that could save mutual funds millions of dollars each year by creating a new, abbreviated mutual fund document that would take the place of lengthy fund prospectuses under some circumstances.

Mutual fund advisory firms have a troubling conflict of interest that may cause them to pull their punches in some proxy votes, according to SEC Commissioner Paul R. Carey.

The two-and-a-half-year-old struggle between Navellier Investment Management of Reno, Nev. and two former independent fund directors is once again heating up with lawsuits being filed by both sides. Navellier has filed a new lawsuit against one former fund trustee who has reciprocated with his own lawsuit. A second former trustee is contemplating filing a similar lawsuit.

A recently enacted Maryland law that makes it more difficult to challenge the independence of fund directors in court is under attack.

The SEC may be overdoing it in its preparations for the computer-programming transition to the year 2000, according to some mutual fund operations executives.

The process of valuing the securities in a mutual fund's portfolio - often an imprecise task - may require more work from now on for some fund companies and fund directors.

Deep Discount Advisors of Asheville, N.C. has sent a protest letter to the SEC charging that the Global Small Cap Fund of New York is trying to prevent Deep Discount from introducing a proxy vote to elect a new slate of directors for the fund.

The SEC is expected to issue guidance soon on how mutual funds should value their securities, an issue of critical importance to the fund industry that the SEC has not systematically addressed in more than 25 years.