Special Program Root Tag

MIAMI-Hedge fund advisors that believe registration has benefits are quickly learning compliance brings plenty of headaches, too.

MIAMI-Distributing retail products has become more complex, and fund companies have to realize it's no longer business as usual. That was the message from speakers at The National Investment Company Service Association's 25th Anniversary Annual Conference & Expo here last month.

NEW YORK-While BlackBerries buzzed with news of Alan Greenspan's warning of a "possible recession" and the worldwide chain-reaction sell-off triggered by the dip in Chinese markets, a panel of mutual fund managers here last Tuesday pitched products to protect investors against an economic slump.

If fund companies thought that the days of regulators pressing charges for questionable or illegal mutual fund trading, revenue sharing, gifts, directed brokerage or fund sales were over, they'd better think twice.

Securian Fin'l Promotes Eight Senior Managers

American Century Acquires $225M of Kopp Assets

New high-tech offerings-including wireless technology, virtual communication and online communities-are changing the dynamics of how fund companies communicate with customers.

Investors are chasing alpha and sophisticated clients are willing to pay premium fees for it, according to Bloomberg columnist Chet Currier.

Mutual fund sales and investment-banking fees boosted the Royal Bank of Canada’s first-quarter profits to a record high, according to Bloomberg. The bank raised its dividend 15 %, the most in at least a decade.

A new exchange-traded fund from PowerShares and Dorsey Wright & Associates promises to be truly technical, tracking 100 stocks on peer-performance and patterns, rather than executive interviews and financial statements, according to MarketWatch."When people hear technical analysis, they think of black magic or something," Tom Dorsey, the Richmond, Va.-based firm's president, said. "But our method is really about measuring supply and demand in the marketplace and quantifying those trends. Our process is very long-term in nature."

Investors are starting to withdraw assets out of mutual funds, according to MarketWatch. Investors took a net $2.39 billion from global equity mutual funds by last Thursday, according to TrimTabs Investment Research. The previous week, investors put $2.73 billion were poured into such funds.The outpour came after last week’s stock market biggest one-day decline since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. The decline was due to the Chinese stock market declining 9%, and constant worry about U.S. subprime loans and the Japanese yen’s sharp appreciation.

After criticism that regulators over-corrected after the age of Enron, some observers say they see the Securities Exchange Commission slowly slipping away from its fervently investor-oriented positions toward a more business-friendly orientation, according to the International Herald Tribune.

Mutual Fund managers who specialize in buying when stocks bottom out are sitting tight, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The man who calls himself “The Bishop” and who has sent six threatening letters and two dud pipe bombs over the past 18 months is expected to strike again, the Associated Press reports. One of the pipe bombs was sent to American Century on Jan. 31. Then, on Feb. 1, a similar explosive was found in a Chicago office building.And next time, given that “The Bishop’s” letters have become increasingly menacing, the bombs could be real, warns Stratfor counterterrorism expert Fred Burton.

JPMorgan Funds this week has launched three international funds that each will invest at least 80% of their assets in China, Russia and Latin America, respectively. The JPMorgan China Region Fund will be managed out of Hong Kong by a five-person team: Howard Wang, Shumin Huang, Emerson Yip, Patrick Lung and Peter Tang.

After withdrawing $3.42 billion from U.S. equity funds in December, investors poured $7.23 billion into them in January, possibly signaling a reversal in the long interest in global and emerging markets funds, Investor’s Business Daily reports.

Fund companies continued to vote their proxies overwhelmingly in support of management in 2006, supporting 92% of management-sponsored proposals last year but only 37% of shareholder-sponsored proposals, Reuters reports.

In an attempt to distinguish themselves in order to win customers, asset management firms are increasingly offering institutional-quality investment choices in retirement plans, MarketWatch reports, populating 401(k) plans with hedge-like funds, commodities, real estate and other alternative investments.

Asked whether all of the problems in the fund industry have been solved with the eight new regulations that the Securities and Exchange Commission has imposed on it since the fund trading scandal erupted, Andrew Donohue, the SEC’s top fund regulator, tells The Wall Street Journal that the Commission will continue to search for infractions.

John Hancock has created a retirement income and rollover solutions business unit.