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Merrill Lynch Investment Managers has just announced it has gotten a preparatory license from the Chinese Security Regulatory Commission to establish a joint venture mutual fund company with subsidiaries of the Bank of China.

Eaton Vance Corp. announced Thursday that former Chairman Landon T. Clay will sell all of his 8.5 million shares of nonvoting common stock.

The SEC Thursday charged Heartland Advisors with fraud and insider trading on two of its junk bond mutual funds. The charges stem from a sudden, $93 million drop in the value of several of the firm’s municipal junk bond funds in 2000 (see MFMN 12/1/00). The SEC filed its complaint in a Wisconsin court against the firm and CEO William Nasgovitz, COO Paul Beste, General Counsel Jilaine Bauer, SVP Kevin Clark, Treasurer Kenneth Della and fund manager Thomas Conlin.

For a fund firm already on the decline, the recent fraud charges brought against Invesco are reason to pull out of its mutual funds, Morningstar analyst Dan Culloton wrote Tuesday.

Janus Capital has just named portfolio managers for its high-yield portfolios and its growth and income funds.

Michael Milken redux? Regulators are going to expand the mutual fund trading probe to stale price arbitrage in junk bond funds, analysts told Reuters Wednesday.

The mutual fund arm of Sun Life Financial Inc. is being investigated by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s office, raising the number of regulators looking into the firm’s activity to three.

With the mutual fund investigation now extending to the issue of fund fees, Hewitt Associates issued a warning to employers offering 401(k) plans: Understand your fees.

The Stanford University professor who researched and wrote a report about the negative effects of market timing on long-term investors timed the market himself, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Mutual fund giant T. Rowe Price said on Monday that it has closed its Mid-Cap Growth Fund to new investors in order to better serve the interests of long-term shareholders.

A former Security Trust Co. executive pled guilty to securities fraud charges for allowing hedge fund clients to trade behind the bell, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said on Tuesday.

Federal Reserve employees, along with members of the Boilermakers Union have been practicing market-timing in order to make a quick profit in international mutual funds, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Noreen Harrington, a former executive of the Stern Asset Management arm of the Hartz Group, identified herself as the initial whistle-blower in the mutual fund scandal that has ravaged the industry, The New York Times reports.

In an apparent attempt to distance itself from the troubling practices scarring the company and industry, Putnam Investments told the maligned Boilermakers Local 5 Union to find a new retirement plan manager, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Curian Capital, which has made headway in the asset management market by offering a range of low-minimum separately managed accounts (SMAs) to high-net-worth individuals, further expanded Monday when it announced it would become the sub-advisor for Lansing, Mich.-based Jackson National Life Insurance Company.

Four of the nation’s largest public pension funds are going after the board of directors of Putnam Investments’ parent company Marsh & McLennan Companies for its "failure to properly control its money management business and for its severe lack of independent board leadership," the funds announced in a joint statement on Monday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission may charge Sun Life Financial Inc.’s mutual fund unit for market timing, the company admitted.

Not everyone is on board with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s plan to curb late-trading.

Fund giant Vanguard announced late Thursday that it has closed the $664 million Vanguard Global Equity fund to new investors.

iShares Lehman TIPS Bond Fund began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday, according to Barclays Global Investors.