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The latest wealth management acquisition by Bank of Montreal will expand its mutual fund reach in Canada to include funds sold through independent advisors not affiliated with the bank.

A district court judge in Connecticut issued an emergency order earlier this month freezing the assets of Ian Renert and Hawthorne Sterling & Company, an unregistered investment adviser in Wilton, Conn., according to the SEC.

E*TRADE Group of Menlo Park, Calif. has signed an agreement with Standard & Poor's of New York to offer online investors 21 predesigned "baskets" of stocks, to be called E*TRADE Stock Baskets.

State Street Global Alliance, a jointly-owned subsidiary of State Street Global Advisors and State Street Corporation, all of Boston, will develop and sell alternative investment products, including hedge funds, and has acquired hedge fund manager, RXR Group of Stamford, Conn., the company announced last week.

Putnam Investment Management of Boston has settled a lawsuit brought against the firm's top executives as well as its mutual fund trustees by The Commerce Group, an insurance holding company in Webster, Mass.

The nearly $1 billion FleetBoston agreed to pay last week to acquire the asset management units of Liberty Financial, appears to be a good deal, but the real value of the acquisition will depend on how the two companies merge, according to industry observers.

Legg Mason of Baltimore announced last week that it will acquire Private Capital Management, a high-net-worth manager in Naples, Fla. in a cash and incentive deal that could reach $1.38 billion. This is Legg Mason's third acquisition of a wealth adviser within the past six months.

New York Life Investment Management LLC of Parsippany, N.J., has announced that it will offer three new funds for institutional investors.

By issuing exchange-traded shares of the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund last Thursday, the Vanguard Group of Malvern, Pa. may have compromised its brand name and reputation of being a product innovator, not a product marketer, according to some industry observers.

Although the 401(k) market appears saturated and assets shrank in 2000, new legislation recently passed in Congress should bring in new assets, requiring fund companies to double their efforts at marketing to plan sponsors, according to analysts in the retirement industry.

At 24, Carmen Caldwell has already invested some $700 in mutual funds. And unlike many investors her age, she took the initiative to set up the account herself.

State Street Corporation of Boston will acquire the portfolio accounting service business of DST System of Kansas City, Mo., the companies announced last week.

ING Pilgrim Funds of Scottsdale, Ariz. has filed a preliminary proxy with the Securities and Exchange Commission seeking to replace J.P. Morgan of New York as the sub-advisor to its Pilgrim Research Enhanced Index Fund with Aeltus Investment Management of Hartford, Conn., an affiliated company, according to the proxy.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Securities and Exchange Commission may drop a new rule requiring funds to report after-tax performance figures if a proposal to allow investors to defer a portion of capital gains taxes on their fund investments becomes law, said Paul Roye, director of the SEC's division of investment management.

Washington, D.C. - The possibility that actively-managed exchange-traded funds could cause market volatility is one of the issues to be addressed in a concept release' that the Securities and Exchange Commission expects to issue in the next few months, according to Paul Roye, director of the SEC's division of investment management. Roye discussed the SEC's active exchange-traded fund concept release at the general meeting of the Investment Company Institute of Washington D.C. here earlier this month.

A lot of Americans are looking at the short-term when it comes to their retirement plan balances. Thirty percent of investors who faced a choice about their plan balances, either because of leaving a job or retiring, said they took a cash payment, according to a recent study by Putnam Investments of Boston.

Bank of Montreal of Toronto, announced last week that it has acquired Guardian Group of Funds Ltd. from Guardian Capital Group Limited, also of Toronto. The deal is valued at U.S.$117 million in treasury shares, according to a Bank of Montreal spokesperson.

New rules issued last week by the Securities and Exchange Commission outlining bank exemptions to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act may have important implications for the fund industry, particularly for no-load fund fees.

A no-action letter issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission last month gives some evidence of how the SEC views affiliated transactions with regard to fund companies, according to Alan Rosenblat, a lawyer with Dechert of Philadelphia. The issue of affiliated transactions is one the Investment Company Institute of Washington D.C. has sought guidance on from the SEC for some time, according to Rosenblat.

The average American worker's confidence in his ability to retire comfortably is declining, and fewer workers are actively saving for retirement this year than last year, according to a recent survey. In fact, roughly four out of every 10 respondents indicated that they are unsure if they will have enough money to live comfortably throughout their retirement, according to a survey issued earlier this month by the Employee Benefit Research Institute of Washington, D.C.