Special Program Root Tag

The inventor of a popular Reagan-era economic principle is now a mutual fund manager at Huntington Bank.

While it is a mutual fund cliché that future results cannot be predicted by past performances, a new Morningstar study pounds the point home with a large wooden stick, according to Reuters.

It’s official. Paul Schott Stevens officially took over as Investment Company Institute president Tuesday, succeeding Matthew P. Fink.

Davenport & Co., a Richmond, Va.-based brokerage firm, market timed variable annuity sub-accounts on behalf of two of its hedge fund clients, the National Association of Securities Dealers charged Tuesday, ordering Davenport to pay $450,000 for improper trading.

New Jersey regulators and the PIMCO funds have agreed to settle for $18 million stemming from the company’s improper mutual fund trades, according to The Wall Street Journal.

House Financial Services Subcommittee Chairman Richard H. Baker (R-LA) will chair hearings of The House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises Wednesday to determine whether 529 college savings plans are potentially gouging investors with excessive fees.

Variable annuity sales are finally up, with many carriers reporting record-breaking income as a result, according to Finetre Corp. The increase in profits were due to the recovery of equity markets in 2003 and improvements in variable annuity pricing and management practices.

The class-action lawsuit against American Skandia Life Assurance Corp. has been dismissed, according to Skandia Insurance Co. The former parent company was still liable for the case even though the sale of the American subsidiary to Prudential Financial closed last year.

By recommending Class B mutual fund shares when Class A shares "would have been clearly superior," a Morgan Stanley Dean Witter broker violated the Securities Exchange Act, a class-action lawsuit filed last week in Tennessee contends.

James A. Shepherdson, former head of John Hancock Financial Services' retirement services, was tapped as chairman, president and CEO of the firm's mutual fund unit John Hancock Funds, the company announced Thursday.

The manager of the famous but fledgling Fidelity Magellan fund is blaming himself for some of the fund's troubles, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Equity fund flows slowed to $9.9 billion in April, half of March's pace, marking the third month in a row they have declined 50% or more from their previous month's levels, Lipper reported.

"The closer you get to the fire, the more you get burned, but that won't happen to us, because it's always been a matter of trust." -- Billy Joel

WASHINGTON -- In a far departure from the self-congratulatory back-slapping that went on at last year's Investment Company Institute General Membership Meeting, the largest mutual fund industry gathering of 2004 featured a more humble tone from the top.

WASHINGTON -- Matt Fink didn't exactly go gentle into that good night during his last days at the helm.

The bidding is over for the scandal-tarnished Strong Capital Management. Wells Fargo reached a definitive agreement last week to purchase Strong's $27 billion in mutual fund assets and $7 billion in institutional investment assets. Although terms of the deal were not disclosed, Wells reportedly will pay less than $500 million in a first payment and then up to $200 million in subsequent installments, depending on which direction Strong's assets under management go.

Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Names Parker Of Counsel

WASHINGTON -- Fund firms will be required to sport a chief compliance officer come October, but many gathered here at the Investment Company Institute's General Membership Meeting had unanswered questions and not a lot of time to find solutions.

WASHINGTON -- Putting the interests of investors first and fostering investor loyalty were two of primary topics at the Investment Company Institute's annual General Membership Meeting here.

If you think it's challenging to convince your clients to open a separately managed account, imagine the work Yoshishige Saigusa, CEO of Nikko Cordial Advisors, a unit of Japan's third-largest brokerage, has cut out for him.