Special Program Root Tag

Southeastern Asset Management, manager of the 17-year-old Longleaf Partners Funds, has decided to shut the fund to new investors because of a lack of prospective companies to invest in, the company announced.

Even as Asian markets as a whole underachieved during the first half of 2004, Japanese stocks were the best to invest in among mutual funds sold in France, according to fund tracking firm Lipper.

Assets in money market mutual funds rose $14.85 billion to $1.977 trillion for the week ending July 7, after a poor showing one week earlier.

Invesco, the already troubled mutual fund leg of Amvescap, is about to face additional civil charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The Securities and Exchange Commission may soon charge Fremont Investment Advisors and an ex-employee for improper mutual fund trading, Reuters reports. A previous Wells notice added late trading to the previous allegation of market timing, the company said.

The National Association of Securities Dealers has barred Scott Ryan and expelled Ryan & Company from the securities industry for failure to cooperate in an ongoing investigation into allegations that Ryan and the firm engaged in abusive short-selling activity on behalf of three hedge fund clients.

As part of its nationwide expansion, Piper Jaffray Cos. has opened a fixed-income securities sales office in Nashville.

Bank of America Corp.'s consulting services group will launch a unified managed account platform early next year to enhance its quickly expanding fee-based services program.

Seeing little opportunity in stocks these days, Robert Rodriguez, chief executive officer of First Pacific Advisors and manager of the small-cap value FPA Capital Fund, is nearly 40% invested in cash. Whereas in 1995 he had no more than 4% of the fund’s assets in cash, that’s now 37% and rising, Dow Jones reports. "The opportunity cost of holding liquidity today is among the lowest levels in 20 years," he said.

Investors have filed a class-action suit against Salomon Smith Barney for allegedly breaching its fiduciary duty between March 22, 1999 and March 22, 2004 by claiming its financial advisers were selling mutual funds objectively when, in fact, they were steering them into the firm’s "inferior" proprietary family of more than 220 funds.

Northern Trust has selected SunGard’s Invest One fund accounting system to support and help grow its European mutual fund and alternative investment operations, the firms announced.

It is true that the best things in life are not free, but a study shows that when it comes to investing in mutual funds, buying funds with higher expenses is disadvantageous, the Associated Press reports.

As it promises to focus on high-stakes growth investing and its funds finally return to positive territory, Janus Capital is seeking a market risk czar who will work with the firm’s portfolio managers to avoid sharp declines.

The National Association for Variable Annuities has simplified retirement investing into four "retirement food groups": guaranteed income, long-term assets, insurance and investments.

Gabelli Funds is looking to eliminate omnibus accounting from its ABC Fund, a merger/arbitrage fund started in 1993, and require investors to own shares directly through its transfer agent. The problem is that broker/dealers are often charging a service fee for assets held in the fund through omnibus accounts, which do not disclose the beneficial owner of the account.

The parent company of First American Funds has entered a retirement share class into its mutual fund family, in a move to populate smaller companies’ retirement plans.

Few arrests and questionable reforms make some wonder of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer accomplished anything at all.

Primecap, which has sub-advised two Vanguard funds for the past 20 years that have since been closed to new investors, has filed with the SEC to offer three mutual funds, its first such offering, CBSMarketWatch reports. The three funds will put it in direct competition with Vanguard, as investors who are unable to participate in the Vanguard funds will realize Primecap’s new offerings are being run by the same management team, according to The Independent Advisor for Vanguard Investors. Nonetheless, a spokesman for Vanguard said the firm plans on continuing its relationship with Vanguard.

The SEC has sent a questionnaire to a number of mutual fund companies, including Putnam and T. Rowe Price, asking about what kind of revenue-sharing arrangements they have with 401(k) administrators, Dow Jones reports. The Commission is looking at all types of arrangements, be they reimbursements, rebates, subsidies or other payments. The concern is that funds are paying for preferential positioning in defined contribution plans and that the arrangements are inflating fees borne by investors through 12b-1 fees or such hidden costs as sub-transfer agent or distribution costs.

Although fund companies will not be required to begin revealing their proxy votes until next month, most have already filed their voting guidelines with the SEC. While their corporate governance policies are mixed, the new stipulation is, nonetheless, causing some reforms in how funds vote, The New York Times reports.