Loomis hires away managers from rival fund
From The Boston Herald
After revamping their U.S. stock and bond fund groups, San Francisco-based Loomis Sayles & Co. picked off three international stock-fund pros from their rival to boost its foreign offerings. Three managers were hired away from Nicholas-Applegate Capital Management to start a Loomis international equity group out of San Francisco. Loomis presently oversees $68 billion. The funds new additions are Alex Muromcew who managed the Nicholas-Applegate international small-cap fund, Eswar Menon who co-headed of international equity and emerging markets group and John Tribolet who is a European stock specialist.

Jacob's own Internet fund
From TheStreet.com
Ryan Jacob, who left the Internet fund last month after producing triple-digit returns, announced he will be launching his own Internet-focused fund by late summer. The Jacob Internet fund will be a no-load fund and will have an annual expense ratio of 1.91%. It will require a minimum initial investment of $2,500 for nonretirement accounts. It is the sole offering, thus far, of Jacob's newly launched Jacob Asset Management.

Italian Fund Boom
From The Wall Street Journal
Italy is the hottest place in Europe for mutual funds, with assets doubling to $434 billion in 1998 from the year before. When Italy lowered interest rates in order to enter Europe's single currency, it propelled many investors to turn to stock funds. Italian fund assets will grow at a 22% annual rate until 2002, compared with a 12% rate in the U.S, according to Cerulli Associates. The Italian market represents relatively untapped assets still for many fund companies. For example, a year ago, Alliance Capital Management had almost no assets in Italy. Now it has nearly $2 billion. Instead of trying to set up a costly distribution network from scratch, Alliance linked up with the Eptaconsors bank group to distribute its funds under the Epta name, piggy-backing onto an existing brand in order to get into the market quickly.  

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