Compliance

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department extended its $3 trillion temporary guarantee program for money market mutual funds through Sept. 19 to provide continued reassurance for investors.

PALM DESERT, Calif. - Andrew Donohue, director of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Investment Management, said Monday that he doesn't think the SEC will push for changes to rule 12b-1 govering mutual fund fees this year.

A last-minute Bush administration regulation that would permit advice in 401(k) plans was called into question Tuesday by a number of consumer advocates and other experts who testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

PALM DESERT, Calif. - The United States is determined to show the world it is leading global economic recovery efforts, even if that means creating what some in the industry view as risky new risk regulators.

PALM DESERT, Calif. - Having exhausted their multimillion-dollar, class-action claims against big tobacco companies, the nation's top trial lawyers are now turning their attention to the mutual fund industry.

Testifying before the Senate Banking Committee on Thursday, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro vowed to impose stricter regulations on a broad array of securities and practices, including money market funds, whose holdings would adhere to stricter credit quality, maturity and liquidity standards.

A last-minute Bush administration regulation that would permit advice in 401(k) plans was called into question Tuesday by a number of consumer advocates and other experts who testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Target-date funds continue to take the heat for buckling under the pressures of the market’s decline.

PIMCO and BlackRock are two of the first mutual fund companies to sign up for the Treasury Department’s new program to purchase troubled assets—PIMCO as both a buyer and manager of debt and BlackRock only as a manager. Other fixed-income fund shops are likely to sign up as well, Geoff Bobroff of Bobroff Consulting told Dow Jones.

FINRA has fined 25 broker/dealers for failure to complete self-assessments related to providing mutual fund breakpoints between 2001 and 2002.

Industry watchers are stunned that Vanguard, a champion of low fees, has caved in to the realities of lower assets by raising fees on 31 of its 110 funds, albeit a scant average of 0.05%. But the truth is, poor market performance has ravaged assets at many fund shops, and grappling with lower assets, they are looking for ways to control costs, MarketWatch reports.

PALM DESERT, Calif. - Andrew Donohue, director of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Investment Management, said Monday that he doesn't think the SEC will push for changes to rule 12b-1 govering mutual fund fees this year.

Investors seeking safety and stability have recently been moving massive amounts of their assets into money market mutual funds, causing the funds to swell to nearly $4 trillion and making them the single largest mutual fund asset class, according to the Investment Company Institute.

The Investment Company Institute’s money fund working group has recommended a series of measures to make money funds more stable, less prone to massive redemptions all at once and more transparent—all in an effort to help the funds maintain investors’ faith and their $1 NAV.

Samuel Israel, Bayou Group

While money funds have provided one of the few bright spots for the mutual fund industry recently—with $3.9 trillion in assets, they currently hold about 40% of all of the total $9.4 trillion held in mutual funds—they are headed for reforms that could reduce their current paltry yields of 0.29% even further, the Associated Press reports. The government is likely to restrict the funds' holdings to avoid another fund breaking the buck, as the Primary Fund did last September.

Congress is considering whether to make major revisions to the fair-value accounting rules that have created so much controversy lately. Possible changes include suspending the rules, improving value-at-risk measurements and reinstating the uptick rule.

The mutual fund industry is eager to hear the outcome of a U.S. Supreme Court case that could determine the fate of the Gartenberg standard, an old legal precedent used to determine whether mutual fund fees are too high that has set a high burden of proof for investors and spared the industry from lawsuits.

The new chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission is asking Congress to approve a large budget increase to pump up the agency's enforcement, examination and risk assessment efforts.

The Investment Company Institute has named Dean R. Sackett III and Donald C. Auerbach as leaders of its government affairs staff.