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A former Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce employee currently serving a two-year conditional sentence for committing a $20 million fraud involving mutual fund clients has been sentenced to one year in jail by a Canadian court.

In a new study, Financial Research Corp. predicts new SEC regulations will lead to a major shakeup for the mutual fund industry. FRC indicates that some mutual fund companies could pass on the costs of new regulations prompted by the far-reaching investment scandals by increasing shareholder expenses up to $125 per year.

Fornelli Leaves SEC For Bank of America

The number of high-net-worth individuals rose sharply in 2003, a trend that represents a significant opportunity for asset managers offering registered hedge funds, according to a recently released white paper by Financial Research Corp.

When he talks about mid-caps, money manager Sandy Lincoln likes to recall the time when his then eight-year-old and six-year-old daughters asked if they could baby-sit. "I said, well, at eight years old, you can't baby-sit," he recalls. However, the older daughter had heard him make practice presentations at home and replied, "But between me and my younger sister, we have 14 years of experience."

The Securities and Exchange Commission this week filed civil charges against the Beverly Hills, Calif.-based broker/dealer National Clearing Corporation. (NCC) and its parent company, JB Oxford Holdings, Inc., for allowing customers to engage in late trading and improper market-timing activities.

Garrett Van Wagoner, president of Van Wagoner Capital Management, accepted a seven-year ban from serving as a mutual fund officer or director after he and the firm he founded agreed to pay an $800,000 penalty to settle charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC charges the executive and his company misstated securities valuations in a number of funds.

Worldwide mutual fund assets grew by $3.6% during the first quarter to $14.6 trillion, according to recent figures compiled from 39 countries by the Investment Company Institute and the International Investment Funds Association.

Despite solid investment performance, Putnam suffered more withdrawals than other fund providers implicated by the scandal that’s rocked the industry over the past year.

Skyrocketing oil prices have undermined numerous sectors within America’s economy, but the expensive price of crude oil has also helped T. Rowe Price’s $1.6 billion New Era Fund and a number of other natural resources funds outperform the flagging Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, Bloomberg News reports.

Mark A. Adler, a Harvard law graduate with experience in both the private and public sectors of law and the Securities and Exchange Commission’s assistant chief litigation counsel since 1997, has been promoted to the Commission’s deputy chief litigation counsel for the enforcement division.

Gabelli Asset Management Inc. has promoted Douglas Jamieson to the new post of president and chief operating officer.

Investors in mutual funds are increasingly turning to accounts with multiple managers, even though that means paying higher fees, The Wall Street Journal reports.

RBC Dain Rauscher has introduced a one-stop parking space for clients with $250,000 to spend and the urge to simultaneously invest in mutual funds, separately managed accounts and ETFs. Called RBC Total Portfolio, the unified managed account will allow investors to either select pre-configured models or build their own investment style. The portfolio is the latest in the UMA trend.

As the costs of emerging market equities plummet, investors are increasingly becoming able to buy into the market easily via exchange traded funds, Reuters reports.

Assets in fast-growing 529 college savings plans reached $43 billion at the end of the second quarter, according to data collected by Boston-based Financial Research Corp.

While other firms like Putnam and Janus have suffered from the outflows that go with improper trading allegations, charges and settlements, T. Rowe Price has perhaps been the main beneficiary in the mutual fund industry, The Baltimore Sun reports. Fidelity and Vanguard have also stayed above the improper trading fray, and have continued to churn sizeable profits.

Boston-based Affiliated Managers Group revealed plans this week to develop a new subsidiary that creates, distributes and services mutual fund and separately managed accounts.

Don’t expect investors to pour all their money into stocks, bonds or mutual funds before the 2004 election, research firm Lipper said in a report Monday.

Keeping secrets doesn’t make for good friends, and mutual fund boards have been losing friends since September, thanks to secret trades. Now they have figured out a way to perhaps earn some of those friends back by disclosing proxy vote results. More accurately, they are simply following a new rule by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mutual fund companies will soon start reporting the results of proxy votes, meeting the SEC imposed Aug. 31 deadline that requires the disclosure, The Wall Street Journal reports.