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Phoenix Investment Partners, the $56 billion Hartford, Conn.-based asset management subsidiary of The Phoenix Companies, has launched two new asset allocation mutual funds that are noticeably lacking back-end loaded B shares. Phoenix is only offering A and C shares for purchase on the funds, which debuted Aug. 1.

Fidelity Investments has announced the start-up of Fidelity Advisor New Insights Fund, a flexibly managed equity fund.

MetLife said Monday it is reducing its recently reported second-quarter earnings by $31 million after taxes because its New England Financial affiliate improperly deferred expenses. MetLife also replaced Thom Faria as the affiliate’s president.

The First Eagle Gold Fund has gone from being the best-performing gold fund in 2002 to the worst-performing gold fund in the past three months, Reuters reports.

On top of the 9,000 it has already laid off and the 23 branches it has already shut down since 2001, Charles Schwab will lay off another 250 people and close 20 branches, The New York Times reports. This will result in charges of $35 million to $50 million in the second half of the year.

With taxable bond funds declining in value by 2.51% in July – their worst performance in a single month since April 1987 – investors pulled $1 billion from the category, Reuters reports, citing data from Lipper and AMG Data Services. The bond category that lost the most assets was U.S. government bond funds that invest in mortgage-backed securities. These bonds lost $3.4 billion in assets. Municipal bonds lost $1.37 billion in the month.

The Association of Investment Management Research and the Money Management Institute, the trade association for the separate account industry, are aiming to come to a compromise by the end of the month on a timetable for establishing performance reporting standards, Investment News reports.

While dividend-paying stocks and mutual funds are gaining popularity – with Microsoft stunning the investment world when it began paying its first dividend in February – some financial advisers and investors still prefer companies that reinvest earnings to propel growth, Financial Times reports. Instead of receiving a steady stream of income, they would prefer to see their stocks increase in value.

Franklin Resources and Alliance Capital Tuesday both reported assets as of the end of July, indicating modest increases from the month prior, but relatively sizable gains from year-ago comparable periods.

The National Association of Securities Dealers has suspended four brokers for inappropriate sales of B shares on mutual funds, NASD announced Tuesday. A fifth broker is contesting the charges.

The College Savings Foundation, a trade group consisting of 15 529 plan sponsors, has reportedly hired Financial Research Corp. to create a database detailing characteristics of various 529 college savings plans. FRC is culling such information as assets, investment options, subadvisors, share classes and distribution channels. There are no reports of FRC gathering information on performance, however.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has given Franklin Templeton Investments permission to establish an office in China with its joint venture partner Sealand Securities of Shenzhen, Dow Jones reports.

U.S. fund managers, including Pegasus Funds and Southern Cross, are taking advantage of bargains in Argentina, Reuters reports. With the peso deeply devalued, fund managers are now not just buying stock in but actually buying up large portions or controlling interest in companies in leading industries, food and telecommunications companies. Last year alone, Argentina’s economy contracted 10.9%, putting strains on consumer spending and corporate earnings. The nation’s peso has fallen 70% in value since January 2002, when Argentina defaulted on its debt. The nation still owes $76.7 billion. However, in the first five months of this year, Argentina’s economy grew 6.1%.

Ameritrade Holding Corp. said Friday that its core online brokerage account base grew last month by 24,000.

Massachusetts regulators Monday filed administrative proceedings against Morgan Stanley for providing its brokers with incentives to sell in-house funds and funds of partner firms. The new suit follows a similar civil suit the state filed against Morgan Stanley last month.

Fidelity Investments was a butt of one of outspoken fund critic Roy Weitz’ jokes in his July commentary. Weitz, who reportedly took offense at Fidelity’s public support of President Bush’s dividend tax cut, posted a phony Fidelity press release on his Web site announcing how Fidelity was now offering class R, for Republican, shares.

Most insurance company CFOs consider distribution to be a key business issue, according to a survey by Tillinghast-Towers Perrin. Out of the 30 respondents, 87% thought distribution of high importance, and nearly a quarter cited it as the top concern.

Fueled by strong inflows into equity funds during the month of June, mutual funds took in a net $47.2 billion, according to Merrill Lynch. Equity funds attracted $18.7 billion, bond funds $5.4 billion and money market funds $23.2 billion

B-shares are beginning to show signs of wear. At least three mutual fund advisors have recently decided to at least temporarily pull the plug on selling B shares. These include JPMorgan of New York, Quaker Funds of Valley Forge, Pa., and Bank of Hawaii of Honolulu, advisor to the Pacific Capital Funds.

Words most associated with Janus Capital Group during the last three years are generally unflattering and are usually along the lines of "downtrodden," "hurting" or "struggling." It's also hard to forget the massive losses suffered by thousands of investors as the burst of the tech bubble devastated a number of the firm's funds.