Special Program Root Tag

Legg Mason Value guru Bill Miller may have missed his mark in 2006, but he proved his commitment to style.

Marsh & McLennan Chief Executive Officer Michael Cherkasky said he hopes the decision about whether to sell Putnam is decided within the next few weeks, The Wall Street Journal reports.

A West Palm Beach grand jury has indicted the three men who ran hedge fund KL Group on charges of mail and wire fraud, conspiracy and money laundering. The jury also indicted KL Group and two of its subsidiaries, KL Forida and Triangulum Management.

ING has been sued for allegedly accepting kickbacks from mutual fund companies in its retirement plans, thereby boosting fees, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Morningstar is planning to launch a family of fixed income indexes that will serve as benchmarks for individual investors, as well as the basis for exchange-traded funds, mutual funds or, possibly, derivatives.

In line with its decision to sell U.S. Trust to Bank of America, Charles Schwab is no longer going to pursue the top 0.5% of the wealthy, that is, those with more than $2 million to invest, Registered Rep reports. Instead, the company will focus on those with between $50,000 and $2 million.

Hedge funds are setting a new trend by listing on exchanges to raise funds, with Brevan Howard Asset Management and Polygon Investment Partners being two of the latest, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The securities department of the Illinois Secretary of State has sent a hearing notice to A.G. Edwards charging the company facilitated market-timing practices, Dow Jones reports.

Canadian Securities Administrators has ruled that Morningstar Canada’s ratings system is “reasonable and appropriate” and is a viable alternative to the ratings system of the Canadian Investment Funds Standards Committee, The Globe and Mail reports.

Kensington Investment Group has launched the Kensington Global Real Estate Fund, a fund that will seek both capital appreciation and income by investing in blue-chip real estate firms, primarily in North America, Asia Pacific and Europe.

Forward Management has launched the Forward Long/Short Credit Analysis Fund. A fixed-income fund that seeks to maximize total rate of return and minimize investment risk, it will use a credit-based, relative value investment strategy. Specifically, it will screen a range of fixed-income investment sectors looking for undervalued and overlooked investment opportunities, as well as execute arbitrage strategies.

After working at Fidelity Investments for more than 20 years, Stephen P. Jonas, currently its top investment executive, is stepping down at the end of the month. Robert L. Reynolds, vice chairman and chief operating officer, will continue as president of Fidelity Management & Research, overseeing the senior team.

In the years that U.S. stock markets have risen since 1989, investors placed the least amount of cash in U.S. stock funds in 2006, Bloomberg reports.

Lawrence Lasser, the former chief executive officer of Putnam Investments, agreed to pay $75,000 to settle charges by the SEC he authorized the company to make shelf-space payments to 80 brokerage firms from 2000 to 2003 without revealing this to investors, Dow Jones reports. Twenty of these brokers were paid in cash, the remaining via directed brokerage agreements.

John Hancock Funds, a division of John Hancock Financial Services, is expanding its product line with two new fund-of-funds products, the John Hancock International Allocation Portfolio and the John Hancock Lifestyle Portfolio.

Responding to the growing popularity of lifecycle funds, OppenheimerFunds has launched such a series. The four funds are: Oppenheimer Transition 2010, Oppenheimer Transition 2015, Oppenheimer Transition 2020 and Oppenheimer Transition 2030.

Janus managers are shoring up their funds, and the firm has begun to show signs of recovery from the punishing outflows the tech-focused company faced with the burst of the Internet bubble, and fines related to regulatory actions.The $9.8 billion Denver-based Janus Twenty Fund, which lost 69% of its value between March 2000 and Oct. 9, 2002 compared to 47.37% for the S&P 500, had recovered 17.75% as of Jan. 3, compared to 17.35% for the S&P, according to Investor’s Business Daily. During 2006 alone, the fund, managed by Scott Schoelzel, gained 12.3%, while other large-caps gained only 5.6% on average, according to data from Chicago-based research company Morningstar.

Jersey City, N.J.-based TD Ameritrade last week bought a small Baltimore-based trust company with close to $1 billion in 401(k) assets, according to Investment News. Most of Gail Weiss & Assoc.’s retirement dollars come from registered investment advisors (RIAs).

The list of esoteric exchange-traded funds grew by three, with the addition of three ETFs from VTL Associates, The Wall Street Journal reports.

A recent paper by a group of three finance professors backs up with fact what many have suggested for years: too-fluid mutual funds cost investors more than they gain, according to The New York Times. The study, entitled “Does Motivation Matter when Assessing Trade Performance? An Analysis of Mutual Funds,” examines four model funds—each based on manager motivation—using performance data between January 1980 to December 2003.