Pioneer Group Inc. is stepping up efforts to sell some businesses that are unrelated to managing mutual funds or overseeing accounts for institutional investors, in order to become profitable by the second half of 1999, says the Boston Herald.

The Boston-based company is looking to sell its gold mine in Ghana and its venture capital business in the U.S. Pioneer also is planning to find a partner to help manage its timber business in Siberia.

Pioneer is looking to shed the businesses following a year when the company lost $33.5 million, or $1.32 a share, compared with earnings of $29.2 million, or $1.14, in 1997. Over the past 12 months, the company's stock has fallen 40.5 percent.

Philip Treick, manager of the Transamerica Premier Aggressive Growth fund, has mixed feelings about his fund's 1998 total return of more than 84 percent, according to a story in the Boston Globe.

Trieck has managed the fund since its inception in 1997, after running Transamerica Premier Aggressive Growth and Transamerica Premier Small Company funds. The assets in his Premier Aggressive Growth Fund have more than doubled since last fall.

With just 25 stocks in its portfolio, Transamerica Premier Aggressive Growth falls into the category of nondiversified focus funds. Its biggest holding, on-line bookstore Amazon.com, is a whopping 12 percent of assets. Treick says he invests in companies of all sizes, but a weighted average market capitalization of $13 billion means larger companies have the most pull in the portfolio.

A concentrated portfolio of pedal-to-the-metal growth stocks means Transamerica Premier Aggressive Growth is more volatile than its diversified competitors. ''My fund has declined somewhat more than the indices in bearish periods like the third quarter of last year, but it has also come back more strongly,'' he says. ''If you're going to go down, it should be with great industry leaders, because those are the ones that come roaring back.''

 

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