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Investors seeking a personal investment touch helped inflate the assets of separately managed accounts to $528.7 billion at the end of the second quarter, a 19.4% increase from the same period last year and a 6.3% jump during the first six months of 2004.

Janus Capital's assets under management dropped $6.4 billion, or approximately 4.7%, to $129 billion in July, mostly due to market depreciation, the firm said.

Now, mutual funds don't have to feel quite so lonely. The Securities and Exchange Commission and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer have settled their first market-timing case against variable annuity issuers, with fines and disgorgement totaling $20 million.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is reconsidering proposals to curb market timing and eliminate late trading because the measures may unfairly affect pension plan participants and other long-term shareholders, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Strategic five-year plans are a fact of life to corporate executives. But for the Securities and Exchange Commission, the nation's top securities regulator, this year's newly released five-year plan spanning 2004 through 2009 took a lot of blood, sweat and tears and includes several lofty goals. These include stepping up examinations of investment companies deemed most at risk for problems, modernizing information technology systems, more aggressive hiring of both accountants and investment company examiners, and redesigning its pay, benefit and training programs for employees.

The former Evergreen Investments portfolio manager who was found to have engaged in allegedly improper trading of his own mutual fund shares likely was Prescott Crocker, former skipper of the Evergreen Precious Metals Fund and its High-Yield Bond fund, according to fund research firm Morningstar.

Piper Jaffray indicated in a recent filing with the SEC that the National Association of Securities Dealers has told the firm to expect disciplinary action for directed-brokerage arrangements it entered into with several fund firms. Directed-brokerage deals, prohibited by the NASD, involve fund firms sending trading business to brokerages as a form of compensation for the brokerage selling the funds. However, the practice has come into question because of a potential conflict of interest, whereby a broker may push unsuitable funds to investors so that it can reap the benefit of the trading commissions it receives. The firm contacted the NASD after the arrangements were uncovered during an internal review, and in response, the NASD said it "preliminarily has determined to recommend disciplinary action," according to the filing.

ICON Funds Hires Cheek For Institutional Sales Job

Once the pride of the direct-sold channel, Janus mutual funds can no longer boast that they sell themselves. As part of an extreme makeover in recent months, Janus Capital Group plans to start using brokers to pitch its mutual funds, a move that represents a departure from its traditional sales strategy.

Mounting evidence shows education can indeed help employees make better decisions to build retirement savings, including a recent survey by the TIAA-CREF Institute and North Carolina State University (NCSU).

On the eve of the SEC's Sept. 15 deadline for comments on whether hedge funds should be required to register, Hennessee Hedge Fund Advisory Group of New York has issued its 10th annual hedge fund study, once again claiming they are not the wildly risky investments that they are made out to be. Nor, Hennessee claims, are hedge funds a threat to the financial system.

The path to retirement can be a long haul, so author David Shapiro recommends using GORP: goal-oriented retirement planning. The admittedly cutesy acronym does not diminish the gravity of Shapiro's topic, funding retirement for the millions of American Baby Boomers who have not yet saved enough.

The tradition of separating internal marketing support desks and external rainmaker sales groups has come to an end at a handful of influential mutual fund companies, and some experts say they are on the cusp of revolutionizing investment sales to third-party intermediaries, like financial advisers and brokerage firms.

Do larger funds groups have bigger headaches? If you work for a larger fund complex, chances are your concerns are oversized these days.

* As of 9/30/03, the SEC had 3,208 employees in 18 Washington, and 11 regional offices.

Bear market mutual funds managed by Rydex Investments and ProFunds are clawing their way into the ranks of top-performing mutual funds, TheStreet.com reports.

Piper Jaffray & Co. announced it has promoted Scott LaRue to head of consumer mergers and acquisitions.

Cohen & Steers is set to be the largest money manager to complete an initial public offering in nearly five years, CBS MarketWatch reports.

Edward Strafaci, a former senior trader with Lipper Holdings, faces up to 10 years in prison for defrauding investors by overstating the values of at least two hedge funds

Many highly touted growth funds have fallen into a rut in the last month and have raised concerns among industry experts by underperforming Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, USA Today reports.