Magellan forfeits fees
From The Wall Street Journal
The Magellan Fund has been down a rocky road this year.It was up only 105.6% for the three years ended Monday, Morningstar Inc. said. That compares with 101.39% for the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index. If you look back to the last 36 months, you will see that this month is the first that Magellan has been ahead. At the end of each month Fidelity calculates its management fee using a graded sliding scale. The better the performance, the higher the fee, up to a maximum penalty or bonus of 0.20% annually of assets under management. That figure may sound small, but it adds up to huge sums. Over the 3 1/2 years ended Sept. 30, Fidelity had to give up $348 million of the fees it would have earned had the fund merely matched the S&P 500's returns. Actual Magellan fees to Fidelity over the period were about $1.07 billion.

Federated's Christmas shopping
From CBS MarketWatch
Federated Investors Inc., whose 1,900 employees manage about $120 billion in customers' assets in 130 funds, says it is looking to buy an equity-oriented mutual fund company. Market speculation is that Boston-based John Hancock Funds, a division of John Hancock Mutual Life, may be at the top of Federated's wish list. Hancock manages some $23 billion in fund assets, according to Morningstar Inc., and also has a healthy supply of stock funds. Equity funds traditionally offer companies larger commission fees than bond funds or money funds, so Federated is eager to add to its equity coffers.

Vanguard dumps management team
From CBS MarketWatch
The Vanguard Group said it is dropping Spare, Kaplan, Bischel & Associates from the management team on the Vanguard Equity Income Fund. Wellington Management Company will now join Newell Associates and John A. Levin & Co. as advisors to the $3 billion fund. Through November, the fund had an annualized return of 15.8% over the last three years while Newell's Equity Income Variable Annuity averaged 16.3% for the same period. Both funds take a value approach, which has performed poorly this year. As of Tuesday, the mutual fund was off 1.4% to date and the annuity was off 3.6%, a reversal that occurred just in the last month.  

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