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Borrowing a strategy straight from the playbook of its longtime chairman, Edward "Ned" Johnson III, Fidelity Investments has quietly built one of the industry's biggest brokerage houses.

Putnam Investments' chief executive officer says the rehiring of a leader for its institutional sales division last week is another step in the right direction for the Boston fund company's turnaround from its regulatory scandals.

Lake Partners and Newport Group announced Wednesday that they had started a collective investment fund comprising registered hedged mutual funds.

It's becoming more and more difficult to determine value funds from growth funds, according to a Merrill Lynch study.

According to a new academic study released earlier this week, mutual funds perform better when their directors have significant ownership in the funds they are charged with overseeing.

A Google link that would take anyone doing a search on American International Group, to a sponsored link to New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's gubernatorial campaign was suddenly yanked yesterday following an inquiry by the New York Post. The link brought surfers to a Web page filled with comments from critics that Spitzer's Wall Street cleanup is politically motivated, the Post reports today.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William Donaldson cast the deciding vote Wednesday to extend a widely opposed rule that guarantees all investors get the best price on electronic stock trades.

National Financial, a unit of Fidelity Investments, announced a strategic relationship Monday with Chicago-based Envestnet Asset Management to offer correspondent broker-dealers and their investment representatives a unified managed account platform integrated with National Financial's brokerage platform.

The United States Justice Department has joined the Securities and Exchange Commission and NASD in investigating gifts Jefferies brokers allegedly gave to mutual fund companies, the firm indicated in its annual report filing. Regulators are also looking into potential violations related to travel and entertainment expenses.

Dramatic changes in the Japanese banking system have inspired one bank to target female investors with a campaign that offers free cosmetics and massages, according to a report from The World Today.

Influential mutual fund tracker Morningstar has upgraded its perspective on Bank of America's scandal-plagued Columbia Funds, which after a 2004 merger with FleetBoston now includes the equally troubled Nations Funds.

The Investment Company Institute is urging regulators to designate the Internet as the primary medium for point of sale disclosure of the costs and conflicts of interest associated with broker-sold mutual funds.

A study conducted by financial services market research firm Dalbar shows that the average equity mutual fund investor beat the S&P 500 last year, netting returns of 12.6%, compared to the 10.9% returned by the S&P 500.

Canada's Investment Dealers Association, the national self-regulatory organization and representative of the securities industry, announced on Friday that it was returning C$7.2 million ($5.9 million) to the fund companies Canadian regulators have accused of market timing.

Putnam Investments chief executive Charles "Ed" Haldeman, Jr. earned roughly $13.7 million in total compensation in 2004, his first full year running the mutual fund company, the Boston Globe reports.

Morgan Stanley chief executive Philip Purcell, under pressure to leave the company, traveled to Boston on Friday to meet shareholders, including Fidelity Investments.

The NASD has proposed that Edward D. Jones pay a $1.7 million fine and make restitution to customers to settle possible charges over alleged mutual fund sales abuses.

Some of the biggest mutual fund companies in the country disclosed personal information about their shareholders on the Securities and Exchange Commission Web site, The Wall Street Journal discovered.

PHILADELPHIA - Having borne witness to the mutual fund trading scandal, the separately managed account industry, recognizing the perils of potential enforcement actions, is now focused on identifying trouble spots before the SEC comes knocking on its door.

With the first quarter of 2005 in the books, nearly everyone in the mutual fund industry is curious whether this could be the year that large-cap funds finally overtake their small-cap counterparts.