Fund Firm Buys British Asset Manager
From Financial Times
Amvescap is pulling the trigger and buying Perpetual for $1.5 billion in cash and stock. The fund firm reportedly won out over bids from Citicorp and JP Morgan. The offer consists of two Amvescap shares and �10 for every Perpetual share. This pegs the price at a fairly steep 8.8 percent of its �11.8 billion of assets under management. The report adds that Perpetual will be combined into Amvescap and may fall under the purview of UK business head Hugh Ward. Charles Brady, Amvescap executive chairman said: "The combination of Perpetual, one of the largest and most respected retail fund managers in the UK, with Invesco's rapidly growing UK business creates a market leader with the scale, range of products and depth of resources to succeed in this growing dynamic market."

Heartland Resets Two NAVs
From Wall Street Journal
Heartland's repricing of two municipal-bond mutual funds is raising questions about the pricing of funds. The NAV of the two funds -- Heartland High-Yield Municipal Bond Fund and Heartland Short Duration High-Yield Municipal Fund -- were reduced by 70 percent and 44 percent, respectively. Heartland said that the repricings were necessitated by "the current lack of liquidity" in the high-yield muni market as well as to "credit-quality concerns and a lack of market makers, market bids and representative market transactions". Other sources quoted by the article, though, report that there has been no events in the muni-bond market that would imply other funds may be facing similar issues. This is the second time in the past thirty days that Heartland has repriced funds. It explanation at that time was the resignation of fund manager Tom Conlin.

Load Fund Assets Gain on No-Loads
From San Jose Mercury News
The paper reports on the growing success of load funds over no-load funds. Assets invested in the mutual fund market are now split roughly fifty-fifty between load and no-load funds compared to a two-thirds of assets in load funds ten years ago. Now, though, load funds are once again winning the day. Financial Research Corp. says load funds now account for two-thirds of new sales.

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