SoGen Seeks US Manager
From Financial Times
Yet another European asset manager is shopping in the United States for an asset manager with about $50 billion in assets. Soci�t� G�n�rale's Daniel Bouton said that the bank is looking at a U.S. asset manager with its joint-venture partner Banco Santander Central Hispano. Bouton said that the bank has created a $3.25 kitty to make an acquisition. So far the two banks have looked at five deals, but three have fallen through. One rumored target is Neuberger Berman. One of the deals that fell through was reportedly with Fayez Sarofim.

Deutsche Readies Active ETFs
From Wall Street Journal
Deutsche Bank's DWS Investment GmbH unit is listing a family of 11 no-load, actively managed exchange-traded funds on the Frankfurt Exchange as of November 20. This marks the debut of actively managed ETFs. The bank is aiming the funds at active retail investors. The article reports that Deutsche Bank is overcoming the challenge of calculating the fund's internal value by using the previous day's portfolio structure.

Craig Gets $78 Million for Janus Stock
From Wall Street Journal
Janus's Jim Craig sold his stake in the firm for $78 million as a part of his departure. Also, Janus Capital is staying the course with tech stocks. Fully 47.3 percent of the assets in Janus' funds were in technology stocks as of Sept. 30, up from 46.7% at the end of June. Janus increased its positions in Cisco Systems, Exodus Communications, Nokia, JDS Uniphase and Nortel Networks. It reduced positions in Dell Computer, Microsoft and Intel.

Funds Raise Cash
From Wall Street Journal
In a page one story the Journal reports that fund managers are raising cash. Levels of cash have reached 5.3 percent of assets, or the highest proportion of equity fund assets since November 1998, when it stood at 5.5 percent. In exploring reasons for the rising cash levels, the article reports that the Westcore Select Fund has 40 percent of its assets in cash, the Quaker Aggressive Growth Fund is 74 percent in cash and Schroder Micro Cap Fund held as much as 32 percent in cash. Larger funds with large cash stakes of more than 10 percent are: Alger Small Capitalization Fund, Clipper Fund, Weitz Value Fund, MSDW Developing Growth Securities Trust, MAS Mid Cap Value Institutional Fund and Wasatch Micro Cap Fund.

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