Jean-Marie Eveillard, the prominent mutual fund portfolio manager, will remain with the SoGen Funds of New York for at least five years despite Eveillard's sale of his interest in the fund group. Eveillard and Societe Generale Asset Management of Paris are selling the SoGen Funds' investment adviser - Societe Generale Asset Management Corp. of New York - to Arnhold and S. Bleichroeder of New York. Eveillard, who owns about 20 percent of the fund adviser, has signed an employment contract to remain with the fund group as the person primarily responsible for its day-to-day management, according to a proxy statement the funds filed with the SEC Oct. 22. In addition, Arnhold and Bleichroeder will pay Eveillard for his stake over approximately seven years, the proxy statement said. The purchase price for the firm was not disclosed.

Legg Mason of Baltimore, Md., has announced it has entered into a joint venture with Bingham Dana LLP, an international law firm based in Boston, to offer investment management and trust administration services for Bingham Dana's clients.

Two leading mutual fund companies and two brokerage firms are collaborating to develop an electronic communications network (ECN), yet to be named. The trading divisions of Fidelity Investments of Boston and Charles Schwab Corporation of San Francisco are joining with the DLJ and Pershing affiliates of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette of New York and Spear, Leads & Kellogg of New York to form a new ECN.

Liberty Funds Group of Boston announced that it is merging the equity trading functions of its mutual fund groups - Stein Roe Mutual Funds of Chicago and Colonial Management Associates of Boston - so that trades for both fund families will be done from one central location.

Orbitex Management of New York, investment adviser to the Orbitex Group of Funds, has announced the merger of the American Diversified Global Value Fund into the Orbitex Growth Fund.

Bad news for the mutual fund industry about the slowdown and concentration of net sales has just been compounded. Data shows that the market value of fund companies has declined 14 percent since 1997, while the market value of institutional asset management companies has risen 32 percent.

Legg Mason of Baltimore, Md., announced that it has acquired Berkshire Asset Management of Wilkes-Barre, Penn., a firm that manages assets for high-net-worth individuals and institutions.

Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. of New York said it would keep its mutual fund and annuity businesses separate from those of General American Life Insurance Co. of St. Louis, Mo. MetLife announced on Aug. 27 it would acquire General American, which had been unable to repay short-term funding agreements.

Pioneer Investment Management of Boston has purchased the tiny $8.8 million Third Avenue High Yield Fund from EQSF Advisers, the New York-based adviser to the five fund Third Avenue Trust fund complex, for an undisclosed amount. As part of the arrangement, Margaret Patel, the fund's current portfolio manager, will continue to manage the fund. Pending approval of Third Avenue High Yield fund shareholders, the fund will become the Pioneer High Yield Fund.

The multiples for mutual fund companies are about eight percent less than the multiples for money management firms that run institutional assets, according to data released last week by Putnam, Lovell, de Guardiola & Thornton, the investment banking firm based in San Francisco. Data for year-to-date mergers and acquisitions of institutional and retail money management firms shows that institutional firms are being valued at 9.3 times annual pre-tax earnings and mutual fund companies are being valued at 8.6 times annual pre-tax earnings, the firm said.

At a time when merger activity in the mutual fund industry has slowed, Western-Southern Enterprise, an insurance and financial services company in Cincinnati, Ohio, is increasing its mutual fund presence through acquisitions.

The Strong Funds is acquiring a small Midwest discount broker/dealer and plans, at the same time, to create its own online brokerage. Strong Capital Management of Menomonee Falls, Wis., announced Aug. 12 that it is acquiring discount broker Ziegler Thrift Trading (ZTT).

Standard & Poor's of New York has acquired a four-year-old mutual fund information and analysis provider in Japan, for an undisclosed amount. S&P said in a statement that the company, IFIS Inc. of Tokyo, is a leading provider of mutual fund analysis that includes "depth" and "local market knowledge."

PricewaterhouseCoopers of New York has acquired a part of the accounting firm of McGladrey & Pullen LLP of Minneapolis in a deal announced last week.

In the wake of its acquisition of Bankers Trust Corp. of New York in June, Deutsche Bank of Frankfurt, Germany, is taking steps to merge its U.S. fund operations.

John Turner, chairman of ReliaStar Financial Corp. of Minneapolis, said his company may purchase additional mutual fund companies besides Pilgrim Capital Corp. of Phoenix.

PFPC Worldwide, the pooled investment products and mutual fund administration, transfer agency and back office servicing unit of PNC Bank Corp. in Pittsburgh, has agreed to purchase First Data Investor Services Group for $1.1 billion in cash. Investor Services Group is the investment product servicing arm of First Data Corp. of Atlanta, one of the largest electronic payment and processing services companies. PFPC is based in Wilmington, Del.

Frank Russell Co. of Tacoma, Wash. has teamed up with The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi of Tokyo to create a family of multi-manager funds. This will be the first time that multi-manager funds have been available to individual investors in Japan.

Deutsche Asset Management of New York has consolidated the marketing and sales divisions of the mutual fund businesses of Deutsche Funds, Bankers Trust, BT Alex. Brown and Morgan Grenfell under Deutsche Asset Mangement.

Putnam Investments of Boston has joined with the Thomas H. Lee Company of Boston, a venture capital firm, to form a partnership which will permit Putnam to sell stakes in venture capital funds and other investment products to institutions and advisors serving high-net-worth investors. The partnership, to be known as TH Lee, Putnam Capital, plans to offer its first fund by Dec. 31. Putnam will have a 25 percent stake in the partnership, with Lee owning the balance. Putnam also has acquired a stake in Lee. Terms of that arrangement were not disclosed.