Pilgrim America Capital Corp. of Phoenix, Ariz., has closed on its acquisition of the 11 retail Nicholas-Applegate Mutual Funds of San Diego, Calif. The funds were purchased for $24 million.

ND Holdings of Minot, N.D., acquired the Lancaster Nebraska Tax-Free Fund and merged it into the Nebraska Municipal Fund on May 24. The Lancaster Nebraska Tax-Free Fund had assets of $13 million, and these were merged with Nebraska Municipal Fund's $28 million of assets, bringing the fund's total assets to $41 million. ND Holdings bought the fund from Smith Hayes Financial Services Corp. of Lincoln, Neb.

Alleghany Asset Management of Chicago has purchased Blairlogie Capital Management from Pimco Advisors of Newport Beach, Calif. Blairlogie, based in Edinburgh, Scotland, manages $890 million in assets, primarily in non-U.S. equities. Stuart Bilton, president of Alleghany, said the purchase of Blairlogie gives his firm international investing expertise.

The Depository Trust Company and the National Securities Clearing Corporation plan to merge. DTC and NSCC made the decision after nine months of discussion between their boards and management teams.

American Century Investments of Kansas City, Mo., is making a minority investment in W.R. Hambrecht + Co., an entrepreneurial investment bank in San Francisco. American Century made the investment in part because of the bank's capabilities to offer initial public offerings online, according to Harold Bradley, senior vice president of American Century.

First Union Corp. of Charlotte, N.C., will pay approximately $1.1 billion in stock to purchase EVEREN Capital Corp. of Chicago, the companies announced last week. First Union said the merger will give it national retail distribution.

American International Group (AIG) of New York will acquire a majority stake in John McStay Investment Counsel, an investment management company based in Dallas, for an undisclosed sum. The deal is expected to close in June.

Analytic Investors' four mutual fund portfolios have joined the UAM Funds family. Based in Los Angeles, Analytic Investors is a diversified asset management firm that specializes in quantitative investment techniques that make use of mathematical models. These models include variables that cover multiple aspects of a stock's value. The firm's four portfolios include: Analytic Enhanced Equity, Analytic Defensive Equity, Analytic Master Fixed Income and Analytic Short-Term Government.

State Street Global Advisors of Boston has contracted with First Data Investors Services Group of Westborough, Mass., to run State Street's defined contribution service center in Minneapolis. There, State Street provides telephone service and daily record-keeping for 36 of its 297 defined contribution clients.

The BISYS Group, a mutual fund distribution and administration company based in Little Falls, New Jersey, has acquired EXAMCO, a New Orleans company that trains financial services employees over the Internet.

OppenheimerFunds of New York has acquired Trinity Investment Management Corp., an institutional money manager in Boston with $7.5 billion in assets under management.

The BISYS Group of Little Falls, N.J. has acquired the mutual fund administration business of Bachmann Asset Management Ltd. of Guernsey, Channel Islands. BISYS said it made the acquisition because of its own growing outsourcing business. The acquisition will add to its administrative capabilities.

It might appear that consolidation is occurring in the financial printing world for the same reasons it is in the money management arena. But while consolidation in the money management and mutual fund industry has mainly been done to combine distribution strengths, that is not the case in the financial printing world.

Lowell Asset Management and Pearl Funds Management, both of Melbourne, Australia, will merge. Lowell has $50 million under management, while Pearl has $35 million. The terms of the deal call for Pearl to acquire cash and shares in Lowell. The companies did not reveal the value of the deal or the name of the merged entity.

NEW YORK The value of mergers and acquisitions among investment management companies, including mutual funds, has increased nearly seven-fold in the past eight years and it is expected to continue to grow at a robust pace.

Bank One Investment Advisors Corp. of Columbus, Ohio, has merged its One Group Family of Mutual Funds with the Pegasus Funds, which belonged to First Chicago NBD Corp. Bank One and First Chicago merged in October 1998. The merged fund family now has 48 funds with $56.2 billion in assets under management. Merging the two funds took a good deal of work since Pegasus had 30 funds and One Group had 34 funds, said Bank One chairman and ceo David Kundert. However, no funds were completely eliminated, Kundert said. "Funds with similar objectives were merged," the chairman said. "We chose the best of the best and have ended up with a stronger overall family that carries with it a very strong series of Morningstar ratings and broad styles to satisfy every investor's need."

SEI Investment Co. of Oaks Park, Pa. has joined with the International Finance Corp. and Tong Yang Securities of Seoul, Korea, to form an asset management group called SEI Asset Korea.

The Institute of Certified Financial Planners (ICFP) of Denver and the International Association for Financial Planning (IAFP) of Atlanta have agreed to merge. They have tentatively decided to call the new entity the Financial Planning Association. Combined, the new association could have a very large membership ICFP currently has 14,500 members and IAFP has 17,000.

Merrill Corp. of St. Paul, Minn. has acquired Daniels Printing of Boston. The deal makes Daniels, an 118-year-old company which had been family-owned, part of a public company. The new company will be called Merrill/Daniels. Merrill hopes that the acquisition will shore up its New England operations. Daniels, with over $68 million in revenue in 1998, is the fourth largest financial printer in the U.S. and has 375 employees. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

With widespread consolidation in the mutual fund industry, many industry observers have predicted the demise of mid- to-small-sized fund companies.