Pru Securities Offers Fee-Based Advice
From The Los Angeles Times
The nation's fifth-largest full-service broker said Thursday that it will now allow its own customers to trade stocks online. More importantly, it is launching an optional program that does away with the traditional commission-based pricing system that most full- service customers have grown accustomed to. Instead, clients will pay an annual asset-based fee for advice. And if they want to execute a trade based on that advice--either online or with the help of a Prudential advisor--they'll pay a separate fee.

Better Late Than Never For Merrill
From Morningstar.net
Like a lot of the wirehouses, Merrill seemed oblivious to the mutual-fund revolution, but its moves of late should be encouraging to its investors. It persuaded Paul Meeks to leave Jurika & Voyles in 1998, putting him in charge of two of the firm's tech funds. Merrill lured George Burwell from Delaware earlier this year, and it recently signed on Mike Hahn, a former comanager of the PBHG Technology and Communications Fund. And Merrill may yet land its biggest catch of all...

Dresdner Fund Manager Likes Reverse Vending
From worldlyinvestor.com
David Plant, manager of the no-load $5.3 million Dresdner RCM Global Small Cap Fund likes to take a theme that may be playing out in the US and find opportunities for that theme around the world. One example is technology and companies like Singapore's Pacific Internet. The Internet service provider has a dominant market share of PC users in Singapore and is using that as a bridge to get into Hong Kong, the Philippines and India. He also likes Norway's Tomra, which has nearly 90% market share of the business of reverse vending machines. 

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