The high cost of retaining key mutual fund executives and concerns about lawsuits have produced what may become a common ingredient in mutual fund company acquisitions -

In calculating fund expense ratios, funds may only reduce total expenses by contractual fee waivers or reimbursements, the SEC is reminding fund advisers in its annual, "Dear CFO" letter.

The SEC has made it easier for funds to redeem the holdings of affiliates and large shareholders in securities rather than cash, a move industry accountants and lawyers say should reduce fund costs and ease operational headaches.

Warning: A large diet of initial public offerings may be hazardous to your investment health.

The SEC is prepared to look back before Dec. 8 to sue mutual fund companies if the agency finds apparent violations of the pricing policies outlined in a letter the agency issued last month.

The SEC is considering a rule change that could save mutual funds millions of dollars each year by creating a new, abbreviated mutual fund document that would take the place of lengthy fund prospectuses under some circumstances.

Mutual fund advisory firms have a troubling conflict of interest that may cause them to pull their punches in some proxy votes, according to SEC Commissioner Paul R. Carey.

The two-and-a-half-year-old struggle between Navellier Investment Management of Reno, Nev. and two former independent fund directors is once again heating up with lawsuits being filed by both sides. Navellier has filed a new lawsuit against one former fund trustee who has reciprocated with his own lawsuit. A second former trustee is contemplating filing a similar lawsuit.

A recently enacted Maryland law that makes it more difficult to challenge the independence of fund directors in court is under attack.

The SEC may be overdoing it in its preparations for the computer-programming transition to the year 2000, according to some mutual fund operations executives.

The process of valuing the securities in a mutual fund's portfolio - often an imprecise task - may require more work from now on for some fund companies and fund directors.

Deep Discount Advisors of Asheville, N.C. has sent a protest letter to the SEC charging that the Global Small Cap Fund of New York is trying to prevent Deep Discount from introducing a proxy vote to elect a new slate of directors for the fund.

The SEC is expected to issue guidance soon on how mutual funds should value their securities, an issue of critical importance to the fund industry that the SEC has not systematically addressed in more than 25 years.

A couple of new mutual fund companies have done what could be a risky maneuver - launching a website that mentions a fund before the fund has been approved by the SEC.

The SEC has finalized amendments to a rule which governs the appointment of an interim investment adviser to a mutual fund. The rule clarifies the procedure to be followed when there is a merger of a fund's investment adviser. The revised rule 15a-4, originally adopted in 1980, permits a fund to be advised under a short-term contract until shareholders can vote on a new contract.

Mutual fund shareholders next year could begin seeing the expenses associated with running their funds decrease by millions of dollars as the result of recent moves by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Two top executives at Sunpoint Securities, a broker/dealer of Longview, Texas, allegedly diverted up to $25 million from as many as 9,000 clients during a nearly two-year period, the SEC alleged in a lawsuit filed Nov. 19.

The SEC, alleging a portfolio manager stole approximately $5.8. million from the funds he managed, has sued the manager who has already spent seven months in jail on related charges.

Bexil Corp. of New York, the fixed-income closed-end fund, is asking shareholders to allow the fund to make a change in its investment style. The fund wants to change its investment objective so that it can invest as much as 50 percent of its assets in the equities of growth companies, according to a proxy statement the fund filed with the SEC Nov. 15. The fund currently must invest at least 65 percent of its assets in U.S. government securities.

An unusual fight pitting two groups of fund directors against each other is providing the SEC with its first public test of the agency's campaign to strengthen the role of independent fund directors.