Special Program Root Tag

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sent Hartford Financial Services Group a subpoena for documents pertaining to annuity sales, according to one of the company's recent regulatory filings, Dow Jones Newswires reports.

A mass exodus of investment professionals departing from Janus Capital Management was averted this week when 21 portfolio managers inked fresh contracts promising merit-based bonuses linked to investment performance, Rocky Mountain News reports.

The battle to overturn newly enacted regulations calling for independent chairmen to head mutual fund boards heated up again Wednesday after the U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed a biting legal brief accusing the Securities and Exchange Commission of admitting that some independent directors are ineffective, Dow Jones Newswires reports.

AARP chief executive Bill Novelli says his organization's No. 1 mission is to defeat the proposed privatization of Social Security, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports.

At a time when U.S. and European investment giants are pouring money into China's growing fund industry through joint ventures, a leading portfolio manager is using a different strategy to take advantage of the country's expected economic boom: investing in American companies that are looking to expand in China.

Noted national syndicated columnist Jane Bryant Quinn is warning investors to be wary of high-cost mutual funds, which may be out to dupe them. In a recent Newsweek column, Quinn says that in this market, even tiny percentage differences in cost can add up, making investors potentially lose thousands of dollars every year.

Mutual fund giant Fidelity Investments is having a tough time retaining market share in Canada, the Ottawa Citizen reports. It has dropped from the fourth-largest fund company in Canada in 1999 to the seventh-largest today, when Canadian mutual fund assets have almost doubled in the last seven years to $500 billion.

Janus reported fourth-quarter earnings Wednesday of $18.2 million, or 8 cents a diluted share, down 98% from $811.7 million, or $3.51 a diluted share, a year earlier.

Gartmore Funds has launched a small-cap fund that will be managed by small-cap growth and small-cap value portfolio teams.

Mutual funds specializing in foreign stocks had a banner year in 2004, and experts predict U.S. domestic fund portfolio managers' appetite for international investments to grow right along with investors', The New York Times reports.

Now that regulators have levied enormous fines against Edward Jones for engaging in improper revenue-sharing tactics, the firm is taking special care to disclose these arrangements to investors and the firm's brokers are making additional efforts to diversify their clients' portfolios, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

The Strong Funds moniker will soon be added to the scrap heap of discarded financial service firm brands next quarter after Wells Fargo fully incorporates the assets it acquired last year from Strong Financial Corp., Reuters reports.

Retirement and benefits policy veteran Leslie Beth Kramerich has been appointed government affairs officer for retirement security and tax policy at the Investment Company Institute.

Fund manager MFS Investment Management announced Monday that fourth-quarter sales totaled $100 million, reversing outflows of $2.5 billion in the third quarter.

Fund-tracking firm Morningstar of Chicago announced Monday the launch of a set of Internet-based applications to help advisers at brokerage firms comply with federal regulations requiring them to inform clients of discounts on mutual fund breakpoints.

Citigroup announced Friday that the Securities and Exchange Commission may recommend a civil injunction and/or administrative proceedings against Citigroup Asset Management, Citicorp Trust Bank, former asset management unit CEO Thomas Jones and three other people, Reuters reports.

Federated Investors indicated Monday it is currently in negotiations with state and federal regulators over trading abuses by some of its employees. The Pittsburgh-based asset manager added that the Securities and Exchange Commission and the New York State Attorney General are deciding whether to recommend civil enforcement action against two officers.

The lackluster stock market performance so far this year reportedly may foreshadow a weak year for equity fund investors who subscribe to a theory known as the January effect.

Mutual fund investors who put their money in index-based investments edged out others who bet on actively managed funds in all but one of the major style categories, according to a newly released study by Standard & Poor's. Only large-cap actively managed mutual funds beat out their index-based competitors in the same style category.

Growth Fund of America, the flagship investment fund at Capital Research Group, gained $30 billion of new assets last year to become the largest actively traded U.S. stock fund. The $95 billion fund, which trades in 14 share classes, is second in terms of assets under management among U.S. equity funds to Vanguard's $107 billion Vanguard 500 Index Fund.