Subject Root Tag

The SEC has charged Founders Asset Management LLC of Denver with defrauding its clients in a soft-dollar arrangement with an investment advisor, according to an SEC filing. The commission has issued $790,000 in fines against the firm and Bjorn Borgen, its former president.

NEW YORK - While there are no clearly defined compliance standards for best execution trade practices, firms that do not use electronic commerce networks to conduct any of their trades raise SEC concerns, according to an SEC official.

The acquisition of three asset management companies by European firms within the past two weeks may be a prelude to additional foreign acquisitions, mutual fund analysts said.

BOSTON-The SEC is concerned that increasing competitive pressures the mutual fund industry faces could lead it to engage in misleading or overly aggressive advertising, said Paul Roye, director of the SEC's division of investment management.

NEW YORK - Discretionary, separately- managed accounts have been commanding growing attention as alternatives to traditional mutual fund investing for wealthy individuals.

A suit charging that New York Life Insurance Co. breached its fiduciary duty as a sponsor to two pension plans and two 401(k) plans, is entirely without merit, the company said in a statement issued prior to the suit's filing.

BOSTON - The SEC is considering amending its proposed rules on independent directors to relieve directors' relatives from SEC scrutiny, said Paul Roye, director of the SEC's division of investment management. Roye spoke at a meeting of the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association here recently.

BOSTON - In a study examining mutual fund fees, the General Accounting Office has criticized the mutual fund industry and the SEC for not monitoring fees more closely, according to Geoff Bobroff, president of Bobroff Consulting, of East Greenwich, R.I.

James Mehling, a former vice president of New York Life Insurance Company in New York, last week filed a class action lawsuit, charging that New York Life improperly shifted assets held in both a company-sponsored pension plan and a 401(k) plan and used them as seed money for new proprietary institutional mutual funds.

The SEC will review the auditor independence rules of the top five accounting firms, the SEC has announced.

Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz LLP of New York has filed a class action lawsuit in New York Supreme Court against Prudential Securities and affiliates of the AEGON group of companies on behalf of investors who purchased annuities used to fund qualified retirement plans.

Some mutual fund directors are chronically absent from fund board meetings, according to a top SEC official.

The Investment Company Institute has criticized an SEC proposal that would require investment advisers to disclose custodian and administrative fees, soft dollars and disciplinary actions against them.

Although exchange-traded funds will not supplant mutual funds in the near future, they will be the driving force behind industry changes in the next decade, creating opportunities for some firms and threatening others, according to a recent study.

Fidelity fund customers will be able to gain access to their accounts and buy and trade fund shares through wireless devices by late summer, making Fidelity the first fund company to both provide fund customers information and enable them to gain access to their accounts over wireless devices, according to Fidelity Investments of Boston.

The Lord Abbett Equity Fund, a ten-year-old insured mutual fund with $55 million in assets, was merged out of existence on May 31, according to a proxy filing May 25. Shareholders voted to merge the Lord Abbett Equity Fund into the Lord Abbett Large Cap Growth Fund, a similar fund, on May 26.

The McGraw-Hill Companies of New York, parent company of Standard & Poor's, filed a lawsuit against Vanguard Group of Malvern, Pa. charging that Vanguard breached the 15-year-old licensing agreement it had with S&P by registering a new class of exchange-traded shares on three of Vanguard's equity index funds without the index creator's approval.

Liberty Financial of Boston has agreed to purchase Wanger Asset Management of Chicago for $450 million, the companies announced last week.

An SEC administrative law judge has sanctioned two executives of the now defunct Target Income Fund of Glendora, Calif. for their role in filing registration statements on behalf of the fund that failed to include significant facts.

The Allied Owners Action Fund, managed by Privateer Asset Management of New York, has targeted a second company under its shareholder activism mandate - Comshares of Ann Arbor, Mich. The fund accumulates stakes in companies it believes are undervalued and then rallies shareholders to press management for changes in hopes of increasing the value of the company's stock. The non-diversified Allied Owners Action Fund, which was introduced March 9, announced the new target company on its website June 2.