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It is too early to speculate what impact Harvey Pitt, President Bush's designee for chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, will have on the mutual fund industry. Those assessments will only come after the corporate lawyer begins to take action on what will be a full agenda, according to analysts.

The board of trustees of the closed-end Swiss Helvetia Fund announced last week that it would allow investors to vote to approve or reject a series of changes to the fund's by-laws that the board had authorized last year.

Harvey Pitt has been selected by President Bush as the new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a report last week in The New York Times. However, the SEC and the White House would not confirm that report.

SunAmerica Mutual Funds of New York has announced that it has expanded its optional Asset Protection Plan term life insurance coverage to include the five SunAmerica Brazos mutual funds which are offered as part of the SunAmerica mutual fund family.

The Vanguard Group may add an exchange-traded share class to its Small Cap Index Fund and its Total Stock Market Fund, according to Brian Mattes, a company spokesperson.

Until now, if a foreign fund company had a successful fund and wanted to give it exposure to the potentially lucrative U.S. marketplace, it has had to start from scratch and register a similar fund in the U.S. That may no longer be true. Julius Baer Group of Zurich may have found a way around that onerous process.

Liberty Financial Companies of Boston appears to be struggling to find a buyer for its asset management units and may have to drop its asking price in order to secure a buyer, according to industry analysts.

Nationwide Financial Services of Columbus, Ohio has come up with an innovative approach to providing asset management services to publicly-held 401(k) sponsors that allows employees to actively trade shares of their employers' stock within their 401(k) plans.

Michael Perez recently became president of Emplanet, a provider of automated 401(k) services based in Westborough, Mass. Perez gained prominence in the 401(k) industry as a senior executive for Fidelity Investments' Retirement Service Company in Boston. As a Fidelity senior vice president of sales, he sold plans to companies such as Shell Oil, United Airlines and John Deere and maintained total assets of $20 billion. At the start of his 15-year tenure at Fidelity, he played a key role in the development of bundled 401(k) services, which quickly became an industry standard, according to Emplanet. He was also in the forefront of Fidelity's entry into pension and health and welfare administration in the early 1990s as well as its payroll and human resources information services programs. Before joining Fidelity, he was assistant vice president for the Northern Trust Corporation, where he performed investment analysis. He spoke with freelance reporter John P. Mello Jr. on issues affecting the 401(k) industry.

INVESCO Funds Group of Denver announced last month that Manulife Financial and Sun Life Financial, both of Toronto, have added INVESCO products to their annuity product lines. Last week, the company announced that several INVESCO sector funds have been added to the product lines of five more insurance companies.

AMVESCAP of London announced last week that it will acquire Pell Rudman & Co. of Boston from Old Mutual PLC, also of London, in a multi-year purchase arrangement which includes a $172 million cash payment and potential asset retention payments of up to $28 million over the next two years.

Recommendations outlined in the Securities and Exchange Commission's April 30 valuation letter will create logistical challenges for small- and mid-sized fund companies and raise questions as to when fund boards should use fair value pricing, according to industry lawyers and observers.

The Internal Revenue Service has denied the request of the Investment Company Institute of Washington, D.C. to include the tax treatment of fund launch costs in its 2001 Priority Guidance Plan to finally resolve the issue. The ICI still hopes the issue will be considered this year, but it is clear that since the IRS left it out of its business plan, it is not one of its top priorities.

Efforts on the part of the Vanguard Group of Malvern, Pa. to develop an exchange-traded share class may have been defeated last week after a U.S. District Court decision prohibited Vanguard from offering the new share class using its S&P index funds, according to industry observers.

A mutual fund devoted to investing in casket manufacturers and funeral parlors is six feet under. So are two funds devoted to the golf industry. Other specialized funds, such as one that invested in sports interests, have also died out.

Mellon Financial Corp. of Pittsburgh has announced that it will acquire Standish, Ayer & Wood, a predominantly fixed-income investment manager based in Boston in an all cash deal. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Morgan Stanley Dean Witter of New York will issue a new social index fund called the Morgan Stanley KLD Index Fund, according to a preliminary prospectus filed April 17 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Assets of exchange-traded funds have declined during the current market downturn, along with those of many mutual funds. That is no surprise. However, unlike stock mutual funds, which experienced net outflows in February, exchange-traded funds are being used more than ever, as average daily trading volume continues to rise.

The merger announced earlier this month between First Union Corporation of Charlotte, N.C. and Wachovia Corporation of Winston-Salem, N.C. brings together two families of mutual funds that will have $96 billion in combined assets, according to the companies.

NASD Regulation, the regulatory arm of the National Association of Securities Dealers of Washington, D.C., announced last week that it had censured and fined asset manager Stifel, Nicolaus & Company of St. Louis and two individuals in connection with the illegitimate sale of class B mutual fund shares.