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A top-level securities regulator on Friday warned brokerages against trimming refunds due to investors who were promised breakpoint discounts on bulk purchases of mutual fund shares.

Warren Buffet, in his widely anticipated annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, blasts fund companies that cheated millions of investors through market timing and late trading, as well as directors who fell short of their duties.

WASHINGTON – The Securities and Exchange Commission has ordered a new surveillance program for the mutual fund industry to halt future improprieties, Chairman William Donaldson said Friday.

American Century Investments said it has expanded its lineup of load funds by starting up a large-cap growth fund.

Using active portfolio management, diversification, risk management, and consolidation of financial assets, the wealthiest U.S. investors are acting as large institutions do, according to a study from Merrill Lynch & Co. and Cap Gemini Ernst & Young.

State regulators have launched an investigation into mutual fund trading practices at Fred Alger Management after the company’s former vice chairman was sentenced to prison for three years for tampering with evidence.

As legislators and regulators prepare to adopt more stringent regulation governing the mutual fund industry, some investment advisors will benefit from such rule changes while others will be harmed, according to a report published recently by Fitch Ratings.

Recent allegations of improper mutual fund trading at firms under the PIMCO brand brought by New Jersey regulators have prompted fund tracker Morningstar to recommend selling funds run by PIMCO Equity Advisors (PEA).

MassMutual Financial Group has bought control of the sixth-largest mutual fund company in Taiwan.

RS Investments, an employee-owned investment management firm in San Francisco that runs $7.2 billion in a family of 10 mutual funds, indicated in a filing that it has been contacted by New York and federal regulators in the matter of market timing in the RS Emerging Growth Fund.

The top man at FleetBoston Financial Corp. was rewarded with $11 million in pay for 2003, the same year his company allowed for Bank of America Corp. to purchase it, Fleet said in an annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The CEO of Franklin Resources, despite earlier indications that he was on the cusp of being reprimanded for allowing improper trades within his firm, will not face civil lawsuit recommendations from the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said in a filing with the Commission Tuesday.

Although it recently caught one of its own brokers extracting $50 million from clients in Puerto Rico, Morgan Stanley is now being questioned for its uncovering the misdeed more than a decade later, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Fidelity Investments said on Tuesday that its retail brokerage customers can trade the firm’s Nasdaq-tracking ETF commission-free until the end of August.

Michael Eisner should not hold the positions of both chairman and chief executive officer of Walt Disney, according to Ohio’s public pension system, or OPERS. Therefore, the company has joined other pension funds in saying it will not vote for Eisner at Wednesday’s shareholder meeting.

Putnam Investments said on Tuesday a pair of executives and two other mid-tier employees have left the firm following the recent discovery of "operational errors" made by the individuals back in 2001.

Bank of America, the nation’s third-largest bank, announced on Monday the launch of a new product for financial advisers that will enable their high net worth clients to customize their portfolios.

Fidelity Investments, the nation’s biggest mutual fund complex, said on Monday it has reshuffled its portfolio management team for three of its Select funds.

Bank of America’s retiring asset management chief, Richard DeMartini, is set to receive $4 million in incentives before his departure April 1, Reuters reports.

A $120 million lawsuit against former New York Stock Exchange Chief Dick Grasso may be next on New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s hit list, The Wall Street Journal reports.