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Wells Fargo and MassMutual Retirement Services are teaming up to create a new pension service with online capabilities. The new pension program will include administration, actuarial, trustee and investment management services. It will also offer Internet-based communication and administration services. For example, participants will be able to calculate their projected retirement benefits online. The new service will be available to defined benefit plans with a minimum of $2 million in assets at the beginning of 1999.

The National Association of Securities Dealers has amended its by-laws to require the executive representatives of each member organization to maintain e-mail accounts for communications with NASD. The new requirement becomes effective Jan. 1, 1999.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the self-regulatory body governing the accounting industry, has adopted a change in the accounting method closed-end fund advisers must use that will reduce these companies' profits. The rules apply to funds that lack 12b-1 or contingent deferred sales charges (fees paid when a shareholder redeems his shares). These include closed-end and privately-placed funds.

Donald Yacktman and his money management firm have won an early round in their court fight with the independent directors of the Yacktman funds.

Morningstar is introducing investment information and analysis aimed at the retail Japanese mutual fund industry. The new products are being introduced by Morningstar Japan K.K., a collaboration between Morningstar and Softbank Corp., an information and software company based in Tokyo. On October 26, Morningstar Chief Executive Officer Don Phillips will be in Tokyo along with Yoshitaka Kitao, president and chief executive officer of Morningstar Japan, who is also CEO of Softbank, to talk about the new products. Using Morningstar's U.S. operations as a model, Morningstar Japan plans to publish investment research and analysis for Japanese investors and financial professionals. Softbank also has a major stake in the U.S. Internet businesses, Yahoo! Inc. and GeoCities.

Confluence Technologies has released the latest version of its flagship mutual fund software, FundStation Version 4.30. The new version will be able to translate performance data into euros, when that currency is adopted. It also allows companies to easily transfer their data to CTCI 2.0, NASDAQ's new message format for daily and year-end reporting of mutual fund information.

The merger of the Travelers Group and Citicorp into Citigroup is expected to create one of the most powerful financial services organization in the world. Within that, Citigroup is creating what it hopes will become one of the largest money managers in the world.

Negotiations for the sale of Pilgrim Baxter & Associates to Nationwide Financial Services have ended, according to United Asset Management Corp., Pilgrim Baxter's owner, and Nationwide. United Asset Management (UAM) and Nationwide could not agree on the terms of the sale. According to published reports, Nationwide would have paid roughly $600 million for Pilgrim Baxter, a mutual fund company based in Wayne, Pa. Officials either declined comment or declined to provide details on why the sale talks failed.

Investment company advisers have until Dec. 7 to file the first of two required new forms with the Securities and Exchange Commission on how prepared their computer systems are for the Year 2000. The second form is due by June 7, 1999. Advisers may not file forms more than two weeks before the deadlines.

Legislation that would make it easier for banks, brokerage firms and insurance companies to merge and cross-sell products and which consumer groups attacked as anti-competitive and a major threat to privacy, will not be passed this year. But, the Financial Services Modernization Act, which the Senate was expected not to act on before Congress adjourned, is likely to be revived next year.

Major fund companies are not likely to embrace Cuba as the antidote to the outflow of assets from their equity funds, but one Miami-based company hopes to be the first into a market it believes is destined to take off.

The Presbyterian Church is creating a family of mutual funds in which its affiliated colleges, schools and congregations can invest the money they raise.

New England Financial (NEF) is creating a new computer-based personal money management tool to be known as the Electronic Money Management Account. All money placed in the account will be invested in a money market fund offered through New England Securities Corp., an affiliate.

Putnam Investments has agreed to make an investment in Nissay Asset Management Corp. (NAMCO), a Japanese money manager, and help it develop a new product line.

Echoing a complaint against Fidelity Investments filed by shareholders three weeks earlier, shareholders of T. Rowe Price have filed a suit challenging the independence of the Baltimore company's directors.

Employees are logging onto the Internet and their internal company intranets increasingly to check on their defined contribution plans.

The SEC has provided more detail on how funds can illustrate their investment performance in new and newly revised SEC documents. The details concern the newly revised N-1A form and the new profile or summary prospectuses.

The Hartford Mutual Funds is introducing C shares into its family of 10 mutual funds. The new C shares will pay brokers a two percent sales commission and a one percent annual trail beginning in the second year to be paid quarterly. Clients pay a one percent up-front sales load on new investments and an annual one percent 12b-1 fee on total assets. A one percent contingent deferred sales charge is assessed on redemptions within 12 months of new share purchases.

Shareholder Communications Corp. is acquiring Kissel-Blake Inc., a proxy solicitation specialist and consultant. Kissel-Blake, which has been involved in merger, acquisitions, restructuring and proxy contests with KKR/RJR Nabisco Inc., Philip Morris/Kraft, Philip Morris/General Foods and Bell Atlantic/NYNEX, will operate as a subsidiary of Shareholder Communications.

The fact that the mutual fund industry's primary trade organization, the Investment Company Institute (ICI), relies on the dues of mutual fund companies which in turn pass on the cost to shareholders, means the group represents two constituencies whose interests are sometimes diametrically opposed, some critics say.