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Franklin Templeton will eliminate B share classes on its funds as of Jan. 14. This could signal the end to the controversial share class, which has come under regulators’ scrutiny in recent months.

Canadian regulators reportedly have entered the final stages of a probe involving three prominent North American mutual fund providers. The Ontario Securities Commission launched a probe in November to uncover practices of improper market timing and late trading at CI Fund Management Inc., AGF Management Ltd. and IGM Financial Group, Inc.

AIG Global Investment Group , whose member companies are subsidiaries of American International Group Inc., announced Friday that AIG Private Equity Portfolio III, or PEP III, had its second and final close on Nov. 12, with commitments totaling nearly $239 million.

The distributor and investment advisor for the Franklin Templeton family of mutual funds Monday agreed to pay $20 million to settle charges that they made ill use of brokerage commissions.

Fidelity Investments is gearing up for a fight with federal regulators now questioning a business relationship between a pair of siblings who handle a fraction of the fund giant’s trading business, The Boston Globe reports.

After jumping into the exchange-traded fund business only four years ago, the United Kingdom’s main stock exchange is quickly emerging as Europe’s hub for ETF transactions, Reuters reports.

Soon to retire Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) recently applauded the efforts of federal securities regulators for their continuing efforts to enact a series of mutual fund reforms that benefit individual investors.

The NASD has come down on 29 broker/dealers for more than 8,000 instances of failing to disclose reportable information to customers. The firms have neither admitted to nor denied allegations, but consented to the entry of the findings. Reportable information includes customer complaints, regulatory actions, criminal charges and convictions.

Although there are still two weeks left to the year, the 2004 sector derby is in full swing.

Two attacks on the SEC's requirement for independent board chairmen are unlikely to topple the hotly contested rule, industry insiders say, and like it or not, funds run by outsiders could find their fees, and therefore their profits, reduced. But one ploy that could result would be a delay past the current Jan. 16, 2006 deadline for funds to install independent chairmen.

A bill introduced in the House of Representatives would permit employers to offer a hybrid defined benefit plan and defined contribution plan with employees receiving a single statement.

Index Development Partners, a nascent exchange-traded funds provider, is reportedly bulking up to break into the market by preparing variations of actively managed investments, which it is calling "performance indexes."

Pioneer Veteran Patel to Manage Opportunity Fund

Paul Roye, director of the SEC's division of investment management, recently indicated that clearly defining what can be exchanged between brokers and fund companies through soft dollars will be a priority of the Commission in 2005. Speaking before the Consumer Federation of America, Roye said that this will be a "front-burner" priority, one that will probably be resolved by limiting the definition of "research."

As the oldest bank in the United States, The Bank of New York has seen many changes over the past 220 years. But perhaps none as important as the regulatory changes being ushered into the financial services industry by the Securities and Exchange Commission within the last several months.

Domestic junk bond mutual funds bled $167 million in cash outflows during the one-week period ending Wednesday, Reuters reports.

The mutual fund industry's three-month rally of robust sales tapered off in November when investors withdrew $600 million from domestic stock funds, CBS MarketWatch reports.

Some Wall Street executives have been breathing a sigh of relief that New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer is going to run for governor. But if he does move on, will that mean a more relaxed stance at the SEC?

Country club memberships. Golf trips to Palm Springs. Weekend jaunts to Las Vegas aboard a private jet. Tickets to the World Series.

The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank's recent streak of interest rate hikes is beginning to pose a drain on stocks, a senior Merrill Lynch official warned, The Globe and Mail reports.