MutualFundWire.com
The insiders' edge for 40 Act industry executives!
an InvestmentWires' Publication
an InvestmentWires' Publication
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MutualFundWire.com
The insiders' edge for 40 Act industry executives!
an InvestmentWires' Publication |
|
Tuesday, August 15, 2000 August 15, 2000 Australian funds on the block From Financial Times The largest bank in Australia, National Australia Bank, is selling its wholesale fund management business and planning to focus instead on the retail market. The unit on the block is County Investment Management, which manages $8.7 billion. The bank picked the CIM up from National Westminster Bank in 1997. The bank decided to put the unit up for sale following a strategic review of its business in wake of its June acquisition of Australian fund manager MLC. New York-based Putnam Lovell Securities is advising on the deal. Market timers havoc Warburg From TheStreet.com Even redemptions fees didn't prevent Warburg Pincus from making the news with "mothra" sized capital gains distributions on two funds. The company made distributions equal to 55 percent Warburg Pincus Japan Small Company's NAV and 22 percent of Warburg Pincus Japan Growth funds. Also included in the hits were the "Advisor" shares of each fund. Morningstar says that there have only been six bigger distributions since 1984 when the Chicago firm first started tracking the data. The funds accelerated the distribution forward from December to give investors time to plan for tax ramifications. Why the hit? Shareholder flocked into the funds when Japan's market heated up early last year and than bailed when it turned South. Remaining shareholders were left holding the bag. The funds were up 329 percent and 266 percent respectively in 1999, and both are down roughly 48 percent so far this year. Assets in the funds have plunged to about $500 million from nearly $2 billion at the start of the year. In May, Warburg attempted to staunch the flow by adding a 2 percent redemption fee on shares held fewer than six months on Japan Growth and doubling Small Company's redemption to 2 percent from 1 percent. Before Warburg instituted the fees redemptions had run as high as 10 percent of assets per day. Broker threatening Web sites becoming more sophisticated From Wall Street Journal Web sites that provide asset allocations to investors have been around for eons now in Internet time. Still, these sites only provide a small slice of the expertise provided by a financial planner. Now, a new generation of sites is offering other services such as tax-planning and tracking capital gains and losses. Among the sites noted in the article are SmartLeaf.com, which tracks the costs of taxes, expenses and risk and Gainskeeper.com which helps investors track capital gains and losses. The asset allocation sites noted in the article are Standard & Poor's Personal Wealth (www.personalwealth.com) and FinancialEngines.com. A call to return to funds From Wall Street Journal Here's an out-of-style article. The paper actually recommends that investors purchase no-load mutual funds. In this case financial planner Scott Greenbaum calls Harbor Capital Appreciation Fund "a great core portfolio holding." The article recommends funds over stocks even for investors with seven-figure accounts, something that is currently out of vogue. "People want to be players," Harold Evensky is quoted as saying. "They want to own the stocks they read about in the paper every day." The article also knocks hedge funds quoting a study by Roger Ibbotson that found hedge fund trailed the S&P 500 over a seven-year stretch. The article does cede that separate accounts are more tax-efficient, though the author doesn't seem to find the argument too compelling. Printed from: MFWire.com/story.asp?s=25858 Copyright 2000, InvestmentWires, Inc. All Rights Reserved |