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John Clifton Bogle is not only the founder of Vanguard but also the pioneer of the first no-load and the first index mutual fund. After stepping down as senior chairman of The Vanguard Group of Malvern, Pa. last December, Bogle became president of the Bogle Financial Markets Research Center, a think-tank at Vanguard headquarters.

Allianz Group of Munich, Germany will acquire Nicholas-Applegate of San Diego for $2.07 billion, $980 million of it up front and another $1.09 billion contingent upon Nicholas-Applegate achieving a 25 percent annual growth rate over the next five years, Allianz has announced.

The Pioneer Group of Boston, which currently manages $24 billion in assets, last week completed a spinoff of all of its non-investment management businesses and assets, the company announced

Franklin Templeton Investments of San Mateo, Calif. will acquire Fiduciary Trust International of New York for $825 million in stock, forming a company with $280 billion in assets under management, the companies announced last week.

New York Life Investment Management Holdings of Parsippany, N.J. announced last week that it had signed a definitive agreement to acquire the mutual fund and separately-managed account business of Towneley Capital Management of New York. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Barclays Global Investors of San Francisco will launch its first exchange-traded fund that tracks a Nasdaq index sometime in January, according to a preliminary prospectus the company filed with the SEC Oct. 19.

Invesco Funds Group of Denver is adding a new class of shares to the majority of its funds. The new class "K" shares are offered to qualified retirement plans, educational savings programs, and wrap programs through an intermediary and include an extra fee, which will be paid to that intermediary, according to a recent SEC filing.

State Street Global Advisors of Boston is planning to launch a family of exchange-traded funds in Europe based on the European indices of Morgan Stanley Capital International of New York. State Street Global has a licensing agreement to use Morgan Stanley's sector indices, according to Liz Kennedy, a spokesperson for State Street Global.

InteractiveFunds.com of Dallas, the one-year-old financial services technology company and iExchange.com of Pasadena, Calif., the online investor community, have announced they will merge. The new company will be based in Dallas and will be called iExchange.com. Terms of the merger were not disclosed.

ABN AMRO Holdings of Amsterdam will acquire Alleghany Asset Management of Chicago for $825 million, the companies announced last week.

WASHINGTON - The SEC will adopt a rule by year-end requiring a fund's name reflect at least 80 percent of its holdings, Paul Roye, director of the SEC's division of investment management, told a symposium here Oct. 12.

In spite of requests to delay the implementation of Regulation Fair Disclosure, the Securities and Exchange Commission confirmed at press time that it would take effect on Oct. 23.

WASHINGTON D.C. - The prevailing industry stance that more frequent disclosure of fund holdings would only confuse investors is hurting the industry's reputation, according to several analysts and industry executives who spoke at a conference here last week on fund disclosure.

Zurich On-Line Financing, a subsidiary of Zurich Financial Services Group of Zurich, Switz., plans to form a new investment management company and introduce an interval fund exclusively for wealthy investors, with Thomas Weisel Partners, a merchant bank in San Francisco. Zurich Financial is also the parent of Scudder Kemper Investments of New York.

It is likely that more mutual funds will be liquidated this year than ever before, according to a study by Wiesenberger, Thomson Financial of Rockville, Md., a mutual fund tracking service. The record for the number of funds liquidated in one year, set in 1998, is 222. If the pace set so far this year is sustained, over 260 funds will be liquidated in 2000, according to the study. This assumes that as has occurred in the past ten years, over fifty percent of fund liquidations will occur in the last quarter of the year, according to the study. Wiesenberger is a division of Thomson Financial, the publisher of this newsletter.

Nuveen Investments of Chicago and Epoch Partners, an investment banking firm in San Francisco, announced plans last week to introduce two more exchange-traded funds. Nuveen also announced that it is developing an actively-managed exchange-traded fund. Nuveen does not yet know whether it will introduce a single actively-managed exchange-traded fund or several of them, said Laurel O'Brien, a spokesperson for Nuveen.

TORONTO - Currently, there is no standardized fund regulation in Canada and many fund complexes are structured as trusts, overseen by trustees, who use an advisory regulatory model. The advisory board offers guidance but has no decision-making authority over the fund complex. Altamira and Royal Mutual Funds currently use this model.

In an unusual joint proxy statement filed Oct. 11, Credit Suisse Asset Management of New York, the adviser to the closed-end Indonesia Fund and NAM-USA, the manager of the closed-end Jakarta Growth Fund, announced plans to seek shareholder approval to merge the two geographically related but separately-managed funds. NAM-U.S.A. is the U.S. subsidiary of Nomura Asset Management of Tokyo.

Liberty Financial of Boston is asking shareholders of its Liberty Newport Global Equity Fund to approve plans to liquidate the fund and merge it with the Liberty Newport Global Utility Fund, according to a preliminary proxy statement filed with the SEC Oct. 12.

Mutual fund companies and other investment firms are not prepared for the SEC's forthcoming "T+1" requirement that they clear and settle trades within one day of the initial trade, fund industry executives said.