Fund firm invests in wine venture
From The Wall Street Journal
Thomas H. Lee Co. through a venture with Putnam Investments is making an investment in Wine.com. It is the first fund set up by the joint venture established in July between the two firms. TH Lee.Putnam, in New York, is putting up $20 million of the $50 million. Other investors include New Millennium Partners, GE Capital Equity Investments Inc., Value Vision Interactive Inc., MediaOne Ventures Inc., J&W Seligman & Co., Inroads Capital and Applied Technology, Wine.com said.

Invesco adds load class shares
From The Wall Street Journal
Invesco is planning to become the latest no-load mutual fund firm to start selling funds through brokers. The Denver mutual fund company, a unit of London's Amvescap PLC, plans to create a class of shares that will include a sales charge, or load. Invesco has filed with the SEC to add "Class C" shares to seven of its more popular stock funds. The "C" shares will carry an annual 1%-of-assets distribution fee, and 1% redemption fee on any money taken out of a broker sold fund within 13 months of purchase.

Daiwa and Sumitomo start asset management venture
From The Wall Street Journal
Japan's Daiwa Bank Ltd. and Sumitomo Trust & Banking Co. said that they will set up a new trust bank specializing in the administration of pension funds, investment trusts and other client assets. The two banks plan to set up a 50/50 joint venture capitalized at $474.7 million. They will consign the management of their trustee assets to the new bank upon its establishment. The new trust bank, expected to start in October 2000 upon approval from authorities, will be responsible for the custody, settlement and receiving of interest and dividends for pension and mutual funds for corporate clients. It is expected to have trust assets of around 47.64 trillion yen, the largest held by any Japanese trust bank.

Merrill's brokers hit a glitch
From The New York Times
Sometimes new technology makes one forget how things are traditionally done. In the case of Merrill Lynch, its glitch came three weeks before the scheduled introduction of an advanced online stock-trading system. For about three hours on Tuesday, Merrill Lynch brokers could not process orders to buy or sell Nasdaq traded stocks during that exchange's busiest day ever. Brokers who entered customers' orders near the 9:30 a.m. beginning of the trading day in New York did not find out for two hours or more what prices their customers received.

Janus Twenty Fund copied
From The Boston Herald
Janus has succeeded in a big way with its concentrated fund recipe. Now comes Investors Capital Corp. with its own (shamelessly named) Twenty Fund. The company launched an Investors Capital Twenty Fund on Oct. 18. It is no coincidence that the name resembles that of the wildly successful -- and closed -- Janus Twenty fund, the second-biggest selling fund of 1999. Janus attracted $7.3 billion of new money to the fund through August, for a total of nearly $26 billion, according to Financial Research Corp.  

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