Special Program Root Tag

Stephen Treadway, former chairman of PIMCO Funds: Multi Manager Series and chief executive of the firm’s brokerage, settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $75,000 for directing brokerage business between 2000 and 2003 to nine firms in exchange for shelf space. The SEC said by paying some of the funds’ distribution costs out of funds’, rather than the firm’s, assets, Treadway caused a conflict of interest that should have been disclosed to the board.

State Street and Investors Bank and Trust told 450 employees yesterday they would no longer have jobs following the State Street’s $4.5 billion acquisition of IBT by the end of the year, Boston Herald reports. Of the 450 losing their jobs, 360 are at IBT and 90 at State Street.

Expecting the market to reach new highs and then a correction, value managers are turning to companies with strong cash flows and large dividends, MarketWatch reports.“We could be seeing a correction on the horizon, but our view is that we’re in the early stages of the next long-term leg up in equities markets,” said Andy Engel, co-manager of the Leuthold Asset Allocation Fund. “Stock valuations are high, but historically not at radical levels. We’d have to see stocks fall about 14% in price to realize any real bottom based on historical fundamental valuations for the S&P 500.”

Fund boards, even those with a majority of independent directors, hardly ever fire an inept manager, content to protect the status quo, writes MarketWatch columnist Chuck Jaffe.

Fidelity Monday announced two new share classes of several state-specific money market funds, aiming to attract tax-savvy investors.

John Hancock announced Monday that it has added three additional strategies to its five target-risk lifestyle funds, which have $50 billion in assets under management.

The finance minister of South Korea said the nation will consider allowing hedge funds to operate in the country in an attempt to advance the economy amid competition from foreign manufacturers, according to Agence France Presse.

Real estate funds are expected to continue to perform well, despite some industry worries in other sectors, according to the Associated Press.

NASD Chairman Mary Shapiro says she believes investment products will be more effectively regulated once the regulatory units of the NASD and the New York Stock Exchange are merged.“It’s my hope that consolidation will encourage more cooperation among regulators of all financial products,” Shapiro said in her keynote speech at the Investment Company Institute’s General Membership Meeting. “This cooperation will be critical to fixing what I consider the soft underbelly of regulation today: jurisdictional boundaries that focus on product rather than the investor.”

China's equity market has reached such a frenzy of irrational exuberance that Chinese authorities are not the only ones sounding warnings about the market becoming overheated.

Chinese mutual funds hit record performance highs in April, fueled by a 28% increase in the Shanghai 300 Index, Reuters reports.

A mere 25 cattle that Fidelity keeps on a small “working ranch” portion of 300 acres it owns on its Westlake, Texas, campus qualifies the firm for $360,000 a year in real estate tax breaks, tax appraisers tell the Boston Herald.

Power Financial CEO Jeffrey Orr told attendees at the firm’s annual meeting that Putnam Investments is back on track, but that its profit margins won’t reach industry levels for a year or two, the Montreal Gazette reports.“One of the strongest pieces of evidence that the company’s affairs are strengthening is that the redemption rate has how reached the industry level,” Orr said. “It’s not like money is flowing out of Putnam faster than other companies. The challenge right now is to get more gross sales.”

Exchange-traded funds will continue to expand, fund executives said at the Investment Company Institute’s General Membership Meeting last week, Dow Jones reports.

U.S. House Financial Service Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said Friday that the panel will hold hearings to examine the Securities and Exchange Commission next month, Bloomberg reports. All five SEC commissioners, including Chairman Christopher Cox, will be called to testify.

The NASD fined two Fidelity Investments broker/dealers-Fidelity Investments Institutional Services Co. and Fidelity Distributors Corp.-$400,000 for distributing misleading performance information about investment plans sold primarily to military personnel.

WASHINGTON-Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox renewed his battle cry in "the war against complexity" and reminded mutual fund executives that the weapon that will help win the war continues to be technology.

WASHINGTON-The financial industry should pay close attention to what consumers are saying about it and look for niche product opportunities, according to Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and author of the book "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More" (Hyperion Books, 2006).

Details of the sale of BISYS Group of Roseland, N.J., to bank holding company Citigroup of New York for a total of $1.47 billion are intriguing.

China's equity market has reached such a frenzy of irrational exuberance that Chinese authorities are not the only ones sounding warnings about the market becoming overheated.