Special Program Root Tag

Morgan Stanley has distributed $50 million in fund restitutions to investors who bought funds between Jan. 1, 2000 and Nov. 17, 2003 and were not told about incentives brokers received for selling certain funds or the higher fees they earned through B shares. Morgan Stanley either credited the payments to clients' accounts or issued them a check. The payments were the result of a settlement the firm reached with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Nov. 17, 2003.

State Street Corp., Boston Financial Data Services and DST Systems have published a guide for mutual fund directors on new regulation best practices. Called "Building Investor Confidence" and available to existing clients, it includes releases and speeches from the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as industry articles.

A number of ambitious plans are beginning to take shape at John Hancock Mutual Funds in Boston. The mutual fund group, which advises open- and closed-end funds, private accounts and retirement plans, and also sponsors the Freedom 529 plan, is an affiliate of John Hancock Financial Services. John Hancock Financial became a full-fledged subsidiary of Canada's Manulife Financial Corp. in April 2004.

Hughes Becomes President, COO at Clinton Group

Judging from the stacks of files that litter our desktops, the truly paperless office remains a thing of the future. But the Investment Company Institute's Broker/Dealer Advisory Committee (BDAC) task force on paper suppression and DST Systems are working to move the industry further in that direction.

The wrangle between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce took an intriguing turn last week when, fast on the heels of filing an anticipated legal brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals opposing the Commission's independent chairman rule, the Chamber launched a bi-partisan study into the impact of state and Federal regulations on the nation's capital markets.

The tremendous popularity of international and emerging market funds continues this year at levels never before seen, with $71.2 billion being invested in international funds through the first three quarters of the year, Financial Times reports. This beats the previous record for international funds, when they took in $66.7 billion in all of 2004.

Morningstar's earnings surged 83% in the third quarter to $7.5 million, up from $4.1 million a year earlier, driven by strong sales in investment advice, the company said.

NASD has fined Ameriprise Financial $500,000 for failure to properly supervise the sale of 529 college savings plans, The Washington Post reports. NASD found that Ameriprise advisers failed to tell clients about the tax deductions they could have claimed by investing in 529s in their home state, and so, it has also ordered it to pay another $750,000 to compensate investors for the savings they would have realized.

Abigail P. Johnson, daughter of Fidelity Chairman and CEO Edward C. Johnson III, may not make the cut when her father retires, according to an opinion piece in Business Week. Ned Johnson says that because he has no immediate plans to retire, he has not chosen a successor, and should he be unable to make a decision on the matter, then company guidelines will decide.

After a long and hectic auction process, filled with bidding, outbidding and dropping bids, Man Group Plc, the world's largest publicly traded hedge fund company, won the auction and outbid at least four competitors for the assets of the troubled Refco Inc., Bloomberg News reports.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a complaint against the $43 million hedge fund, Groundswell Partners, for doctoring financial statements with the intention of misleading investors, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a complaint against the $43 million hedge fund, Groundswell Partners, for doctoring financial statements with the intention of misleading investors, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Two leading Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are demanding explanations from Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito as to why he did recuse himself from a 2002 case involving Vanguard since he held at least $390,000 in the company's funds, The Globe reports. Alito promised the Senate in 1990 that he would remove himself from any such case since he owned Vanguard mutual funds.

For the past five years, Fidelity's Magellan Fund has been scraping the bottom of the performance heap in Fidelity's pool of products, ranking 125 out of 142, MarketWatch charges in a recent commentary. Assigning a small-cap expert, Harry Lange, to take over the fund will not revive it, MarketWatch warns.

At a conference organized by the New York State Society of Public Accountants, Richard Marshall, a lawyer at Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Nicholson Graham LLP, spoke about hedge fund fraud cases in the U.S. and the fact that $1 of every $1,000 in hedge fund assets was subject to fraud in the past year, HedgeWorld News reports.

Old Mutual L.L.C. of London is renaming the 18 PBHG funds after itself, stripping the PBHG banner from the funds in light on remaining negative connotations surrounding Gary Pilgrim and Harold Baxter from the mutual fund trading scandal, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports. Last year, Old Mutual renamed Pilgrim Baxter & Associates as Liberty Ridge Capital Inc.

At the inaugural CCOutreach National Seminar, held on Monday at Securities and Exchange Commission offices, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox spoke about compliance issues faced by chief compliance officers, and the role these compliance professionals play within in their firms.

AST Trust Company, a division of American Stock Transfer & Trust Company, has announced the launch of 10 ETF collective funds for retirement plans. AST is offering the ETFs as collective funds, which operate like mutual funds and offer same-date settlement, so that 401(k) and other retirement plan participants can invest in them like any other investment option.

Refco's futures arm may bring in more than $1.2 billion for the now bankrupt commodities trading firm, The Times of London reports.