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The Securities and Exchange Commission brought charges Tuesday against two South Florida financiers who allegedly defrauded Latin American investors and made them invest up to $127 million in mutual funds, the Miami Herald reports.

Fidelity Information Services Wealth Management is expanding its information server to determine mutual fund breakpoints. The enhancement will improve exception reporting to diagnose company-specific breakpoints and to identify eligibility as stipulated by the fund.

In a move to curb left-wing attack on big business, a new investment group has launched the Free Enterprise Action Fund. The mutual fund, which officially launched on March 1, plans to promote free enterprise.

A newsletter that tracks Vanguard has asked the fund giant to better disclose its own investments in its Viper (Vanguard Index Participation Equity Receipts) ETF, MarketWatch reports.

The stock market lows of the past three weeks has hurt the value of mutual funds, several of which posted negative returns for the first quarter, according to a preliminary survey released Friday by Lipper.

State Street Global Advisors lost nearly $7 billion in net outflows from its equity and bond funds in February, MarketWatch reports - with most of the money being pulled from its SPDR, according to Financial Research Corp. Of the total $6.99 billion in outflows, $6.4 billion was from the SPDR ETF.

JPMorgan Asset Management said on Monday its separately managed account business has reached the $5 billion mark in assets under management after just four years in the business.

CheckFree Investment Services announced Monday the launch of new data that can help clients of its leading separately managed accounts platform, CheckFree APL, benefit from the tax-efficiency of managed accounts.

In light of surging medical costs, Fidelity Investments estimates that the average 65-year-old couple retiring today will need $190,000 to cover medical costs over the next 15 to 20 years.

A group of seven private equity investment firms agreed to buy back-office software provider SunGard Data Systems Inc. on Monday in a deal the group valued at $11.3 billion. The acquisition marks the largest leveraged buyout of a public company since Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. bought RJR Nabisco for $25 billion in 1989.

The latest news inside the Beltway hints that President Bush might be softening his hard line on Social Security reform.

Putnam Investments is in hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission again, this time paying a $40 million fine because of revenue-sharing arrangements. The SEC said that the beleaguered fund company did not disclose to the fund boards and shareholders conflicts of interest associated with shelf space at broker/dealers. The company has not admitted to or denied findings but has agreed to settle the matter.

A private equity consortium led by Silver Lake Partners is in talks to buy SunGard Data Systems for as much as $10 billion, a move that would mark one of the biggest leveraged buyouts since the RJR Nabisco takeover, it was reported last week.

As a federally mandated registration deadline nears, many hedge fund managers are considering longer lock-up periods to elude the regulation, a recent report indicates.

Baby Boomers nearing retirement are in a fix: a fast-approaching retirement without enough retirement income.

Fidelity Investments is investing $100 million to spin off its institutional investment arm in an effort to rein in new assets from pension funds, endowments and other large foundations.

Hennessy Advisors of Novato, Calif., which now manages five no-load funds, has been shopping again.

Money Management Executive and SourceMedia are accepting nominations for the third annual Fund Operations Awards.

State Street Corp. reportedly paid Chief Executive Officer Ronald Logue a $2.8 million bonus for 2004, raising his total compensation to $6 million.

Signaling their tremendous rise from obscurity in recent years, separately managed accounts were honored last Tuesday with their first annual awards by Standard & Poor's.