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Purpose To analyze the June 9, 2017 Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Inc. (“FINRA”) interpretive letter permitting the use of Related Performance Information in continuously offered closed-end registered investment company sales materials distributed solely to institutional investors. Design/methodology/approach Provides background, including the application of FINRA Rule 2210, and explains the conditions under which fund marketing materials may contain Related Performance Information. Findings While the interpretive letter will not result in a fundamental shift in the Industry’s approach to providing Related Performance Information of open- and closed-end funds to institutional investors, it also represents FINRA’s ongoing recognition that communications provided solely to institutional investors do not raise the same investor protection concerns as communications provided to retail investors. Originality/value Expert guidance from experienced investment management and investment fund lawyers.

This research determines to prove that ownership structure influence to firm value, by using the debt decisions as a intervening variable. Sample use in this research are trading, services and investment company which listed on Indonesia Stock Exchange during 2009-2015, and purposive sampling method are use to determine he quantity of sample within consist of 175 sample. Analysis method that use was path analysis, sobel test and t-test. Path analysis and hyphothesis test shows that : 1) ownership structure has a negative and significant influence to the firm value, 2) ownership structure has a positive and non-significant influence to the debt decisions, 3) debt decisions has a negative and significant influence to the firm value, and 4) from the path analysis shows that debt decisions as intervening variables can’t mediate ownership structure to the firm value.

Financial well-being is characterised by an individual?s attitude towards their financial status. Financial well-being can be influenced by various factors, such as socioeconomic characteristics, financial behaviours and financial stressor events. Limited research has been conducted on gender differences regarding perceptions of financial wellness. An opportunity for research in this area emerged, where the main focus of this paper was to determine the difference in financial well-being levels between male and female South African investors. Secondary data collected by an investment company was used with a total sample size of 600 investors. These investors used a self-report measure for financial well-being. The results of the study indicated that there is a statistically significant difference between male and female investors? level of financial well-being. The results also suggested that male investors have a higher level of financial well-being compared to their female counterparts. These results concur with results from previous research conducted by international researchers.

Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy (AJIP) would like to introduce an interview section on innovations, innovators, and entrepreneurs if possible in every issue. The interviews introduced will be selected not based on a journalistic view, but rather by its theoretical or practical implications. This issue will introduce an entrepreneur who was a key engineer, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), and CEO of Samsung Electronics, in addition to being the Minister of ICT in the Korean government. Currently, he is the CEO of an investment company. His success was tied to the success of semiconductors at Samsung Electronics, which became the world leader, leading some to even call him "the god of semiconductors". This interview resurrects the debates on the mode 2 society and the role of education in entrepreneurship.

This article investigates the current political struggle in Swaziland, focusing on the role of culture in the growing resistance by youth and other opposition groups to the political repression and naked greed of Swaziland's monarchy under King Mswati III. As this article shows, to date, opposition groups have been thwarted in their campaign for broad, but fairly straightforward, political changes in Swaziland: multi-party elections, parliamentary democracy, increased rights and citizens' participation in politics. The article explains that the King continues to use (and manipulate) culture and tradition to justify his authority, in particular through institutions like the ‘traditional Parliament’, tinkhundla, and the state investment company, tibiyo. These are, however, not part of ancient Swazi tradition; they were created by the monarchy in recent history to help the regime maintain its authority. To challenge the legitimacy of the king's rule, the opposition also creatively uses culture and tradition....

Thirty years ahead of his time, and writing at the same time as Benjamin Graham, Keynes’ determination, originality and willingness to take risks challenged the people with whom he worked and the institutions with which he was involved. Offsetting his occasional investment lapses was his tremendous capacity for original thinking both with his methods of asset management and also in the manner in which he described investing, particularly biases now referred to as ‘behavioural finance’. He possessed remarkable insights, about the nature of markets and investors, many of which remain relevant today. This chapter expands on his activities with life assurance companies by exploring his successes and failures at respectively Kings College, Cambridge (an endowment) and the Independent Investment Company (an investment company).

It is widely recognised that it is essential to the survival and growth of start-ups to initiate, develop and maintain business relationships (e.g. Aaboen, Dubois & Lind, 2011; La Rocca, Ford & Snehota, 2013). Only through establishing business relationships can start-ups embed themselves in the pre-existing developing, producing and using setting (Hakansson, Ford, Gadde, Snehota & Waluszewski, 2009). However, start-ups often experience difficulties in initiating the necessary business relationships (Prashantham & Birkinshaw, 2008). To cope with this challenge, Oukes and Raesfeld (2014) found that a start-up used the mediating function of its partners to initiate new relationships. They showed that after it was made aware of, introduced to or referred to a potential partner by one of its existing partners, the start-up could mobilise valuable resources from new partners.

Academic debate on Rwanda has significant thematic gaps, and does not usually make use of a theoretically informed comparative framework. This article addresses one thematic gap – the distinctive approach of the RPF-led regime to political involvement in the private sector of the economy. It does so using the framework of a cross-national study which aims to distinguish between more and less developmental forms of neopatrimonial politics. The article analyses the RPF’s private business operations centred on the holding company known successively as TriStar Investments and Crystal Ventures Ltd. These operations are shown to involve the kind of centralized generation and management of economic rents that has distinguished the more developmental regimes of Asia and Africa. The operations of the military investment company Horizon and of the public–private consortium Rwanda Investment Group may be seen in a similar light. With some qualifications, we conclude that Rwanda should be seen as a developmental patrimonial state.

LCY Biotechnology, a new company formed by LCY Group and Visolis, has bought the idle BioAmber plant in Sarnia, Ontario. BioAmber built the plant to ferment the chemical intermediate succinic acid from sugar but filed for bankruptcy due to a high debt load. LCY says it hopes to begin producing biobased chemicals via fermentation after about six months, though it may not make succinic acid. LCY is a Taiwanese chemical maker that was recently acquired by the investment company KKR.

Most Americans invest through mutual funds. A comparison of US tax and securities law governing mutual funds with laws governing other collective investments, in both the US and in the EU, shows: (a) the US fund industry continues to be the world leader, but now lags domestic and foreign competitors, primarily because of US tax and securities law; (b) mutual funds are taxed less favorably and regulated more extensively in the US than direct investments or other collective investments, including alternatives available only to wealthy investors; (c) the structure of US regulation – numerous proscriptive bright-line rules written nearly 70 years ago, subject to SEC exemptions – makes success of US mutual funds dependent on the resources, responsiveness and flexibility of the SEC; (d) while the high-level formal framework for mutual funds in the EU is as or more restrictive and inflexible in most respects than the Investment Company Act, competitive pressures in the EU constrain supervisors in EU countries to be more flexible in adopting implementing regulations, and EU regulators have greater resources and are more responsive than the SEC, which could achieve the same flexibility and responsiveness through exemptive orders but has been unwilling or unable to do so in a timely fashion. The paper discusses a number of reforms to improve the treatment of middle class investments, including improvements in mutual fund taxation, ways to enhance the flexibility and resources of US fund regulators, modifications of the existing ban on asymmetric advisor compensation and the exclusion of foreign funds, and unjustified disparities in the treatment of mutual funds and mutual fund substitutes.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to assess the history, current use, and possible future of Rule 12b‐1 of the Investment Company Act of 1940.Design/methodology/approachThis paper briefly reviews the history behind the original adoption of Rule 12b‐1, then discusses the ways in which 12b‐1 fees are used today, some of the issues surrounding the Rule, and finally, briefly explores where we might be heading in the future.FindingsThe paper finds that, first adopted in 1980 in an effort to prop up a then ailing industry, Rule 12b‐1 and Rule 12b‐1 fees have been a staple for many mutual funds for almost 30 years. Over this time, the ways in which 12b‐1 fees are used has evolved significantly such that some people now wonder whether the Rule continues to serve the purpose for which it was designed.Originality/valueThe paper provides a comprehensive evaluation of how mutual funds' use of Rule 12b‐1 has changed, what the underlying issues are, and the prospects for reexamination of the Rule.

Although evidence suggests that institutional investors play a role in monitoring management, not all institutions are equally willing or able to serve this function. We present a stylized model that examines the effects of institutional monitoring on executive compensation. The model predicts that institutions' influence on managers' pay-for-performance sensitivity and level of compensation is enhanced when institutions have lower implied costs of monitoring, but that these effects are attenuated when the firm-specific cost of monitoring is high. Our empirical results are broadly consistent with these implications, suggesting that independent investment advisors and investment company managers have advantages in monitoring firms' management.

PurposeTo provide guidance to investment companies on document retention policies based on Section 802 of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002, codified as Section 1519 of the United States Code.Design/methodology/approachReviews the conviction of Arthur Andersen for obstruction of justice based on the way the firm implemented its document retention/destruction policy as Enron was collapsing, and the Supreme Court reversal of that conviction. Explains why the Supreme Court decision should no longer guide an investment company's document retention/destruction policy in light of more recently enacted Section 1519, which imposes stiff penalties on anyone who knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, or covers up any record or document with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence any federal investigation, or in contemplation of such a proceeding.FindingsSuggests a few straightforward rules for an investment company's document retention/destruction policy with a warning to err on the side of caution.Originality/valueIn light of Section 1519, every investment company needs to review its document retention/destruction policy. This article provides useful guidelines for doing so.

Under the new Compliance Program Rules, each U.S. registered investment adviser and U.S. registered investment company was required to designate a Chief Compliance Officer (“CCO)” by October 5, 2004. The CCO title is expected to carry supervisory responsibility for many of the newly appointed officers, which may lead to personal liability if they are charged with a failure of the duty to supervise. As a result, there is renewed interest in the standard of care applicable to supervisory personnel of investment advisers and the manner in which they may be insulated from regulatory liability for claims of failure to supervise persons under their control who violate certain federal securities laws (“Federal Securities Laws)”.

College savings plans established and maintained by states as “qualified tuition programs” under Section 529 of the Internal Revenue Code, as amended, are increasingly popular vehicles for accumulating savings on a tax‐advantaged basis to pay college expenses. All states and the District of Columbia currently offer, or soon will offer, these so‐called 529 college savings plans. Although structurally quite similar to registered mutual funds or “funds of funds” subject to the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (the “Investment Company Act”), 529 college savings plans raise unique securities law issues as a result of their being state investment programs. This article outlines the general framework of the federal securities law treatment of investments in 529 college savings plans and then explores in greater depth the basic disclosure issues that broker‐dealers face when marketing 529 college savings plans to customers.

The Interment provides an unlimited resource for students in an investments course. Actual investing is increasingly done on-line. It is essential that students in investment courses be exposed to this technology to function as consumers of investment products, employees of an investment company, or entrepreneurs who can see the next step in the evolution of investing on the Internet. This article describes a few ways of integrating use of the Internet into a course in investments. It will highlight two appropriate teaching tools: Internet-based investment simulation games and Internet site review presentations. Both of these can be used to integrate cooperative learning and group decisionmaking into investments courses.

This paper investigates the role of boards in founder-managed firms with concentrated ownership in emerging markets. The existing literature suggests that this type of company, even if they decide to recruit high-profile individuals as directors, rarely empowers the boards in the corporate governance structure. The paper conducts a case study of AFK Sistema — a large Russian investment company which is controlled and managed by the founder. We observe that, contrary to expectations, in this company the founder empowered the board of directors at the same time focusing on recruiting independent (mainly foreign) directors to the board, in spite of the costs associated with this governance structure in the Russian context. Based on this case, we develop a theory of entrepreneurial boards where directors are expected to take the initiative in relations with both internal and external actors and where the empowerment of boards is necessary to provide them with proper motivation.

Harvard University chemistry Ph.D. graduate Mark G. Charest has settled his lawsuit against the school. Charest alleged that he was coerced into accepting low royalty payments for a synthetic route to tetracycline antibiotics that he and others patented and was seeking an increase in royalty payments and damages. The terms of the settlement agreement were not disclosed. “In light of my claims and goals in bringing this litigation, I am very pleased to accept terms I view as equitable,” Charest said in a June 23 statement. Charest worked in the lab of Harvard chemistry professor Andrew G. Myers and graduated in 2004. Charest recently founded life sciences investment company Phenomic Capital, said his lawyer, Brian O’Reilly of O’Reilly IP. “The litigation was resolved on mutually agreeable terms,” said David Cameron, Harvard’s director of media relations. The patent in question was licensed to Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals, which Myers founded in 2006 and

This study utilizes a tonnement-type modelling process to provide evidence of the dynamic adjustment of investment company share prices toward an estimate of the underlying value of the shares. Friday closing prices and reported net asset values for 45 closed-end investment companies are investigated to test the model's ability to describe share price movements. Weekly price changes are shown to exhibit significant negative serial correlation, a result not anticipated by the traditional random-walk view. More importantly, one finds that returns generated from share price changes are significantly affected by the dynamic adjustment of price toward an estimate of the underlying value of the shares.

The German notary is an independent holder of public office responsible for recording legal transactions (Par. 1 of The National Rules and Regulations for German Notaries [“Bundesnotarordnung” (BNotO)]). As opposed to attorneys, notaries are not members of the free professions but rather the agents of state authority. On the other hand, notaries are not civil servants either, but are independent holders of public office not subject to any personal orders or subject-matter-related instructions.

US Congress designed the Investment Company Act to ‘place the unaffiliated [fund] directors in the role of “independent watchdogs” …who would furnish an independent check upon the management of investment companies …[and] entrusted to the independent directors …the primary responsibility for looking after the interests of the funds’ shareholders’.1 They represent the interests of the shareholders, which take precedence over the interests of all other parties. The shareholders therefore rely on the directors and their independence to ensure the integrity of the fund.

Eighteen-ninety-four seemed like anything but the right time to get into finance. The last great depression of the nineteenth century was in full swing and no place was immune. The crisis turned one-fifth of the nation’s labor force onto the streets. Eastern factories went silent, thousands of businesses shut down, 500 banks closed their doors.1 Tappan could see in his own backyard that people were suffering terribly. Up in the iron district, mines were still, shrouded in a blanket of snow. Penniless old men wandered the streets in working-class St. Paul. Across the river in Minneapolis, railroad baron James J. Hill wrote, “very few farmers have any money, and the local banks are unable to aid them. The banks themselves, including many which had been considered entirely strong, are terribly pinched.”2

The aim of this article is to compare organisational excellence based on the model of Peters and Waterman in Tuka Steel Investment Company and Engineering Company of Isfahan Ghaem Sepahan. Statistical samples included employees of the two companies as 82 and 89 persons, respectively. A questionnaire including 45 questions with Likert’s five-point scale has been designed for data collection. Results indicate the observed values of t in eight variables of the model of Peters and Waterman in both companies are higher than average; in Tuka Steel Company, staff autonomy and entrepreneurship factor has been lower than average; therefore, these two companies are excellent organisations based on the studied model. Results also imply these two companies have significant differences regarding some of the research variables; and the average of these variables in Engineering Company of Isfahan Ghaem Sepahan is higher than average in Tuka Steel Investment Company.

Building up a new technology-based firm (NTBF) to the point where it becomes a competitive enterprise with a stable position in the market makes great demands on the founders. Although founders primarily contribute technical know-how, they often do not possess sufficient business skills and the owned capital that they are able to bring into the new foundation is usually small. Their state of information regarding the market and legal and financial questions is often only limited. They are thus highly dependent on cooperation with external investors and providers of information, and have to acquire new abilities and additional know-how during the initial business years.

This article addresses the following key points: A recent US Senate proposal would ban soft dollar arrangements outright. The SEC is considering a proposal from the Investment Company Institute (ICI) that bans using soft dollars for third-party research but leaves Wall Street-sponsored research unaffected. Several large brokerages have either eliminated or significantly scaled back soft dollar payment for research. The SEC is monitoring the UK Financial Services Authority (FSA), which wants to prohibit fund managers from using soft dollars to pay for any research.

Dutch GPs have raised concerns over their future independence after it was revealed that a health insurer backed by a private investment company now owns dozens of primary care centres in the Netherlands. A survey by the national newspaper De Volkskrant identified 38 centres owned by commercial investors spread across the country, covering 155 000 patients. The largest investor, Zorgpunt, operating 28 centres, is a subsidiary of the health insurance company Menzis, which owns half the shares of Zorgpunt. The remainder are owned by an investment group, Reggeborgh. Zorgpunt was launched last year by Menzis to fulfil its mission …

CHINA NATIONAL Chemical (ChemChina) is negotiating to buy Makhteshim Agan Industries, an Israeli maker of off-patent agricultural chemicals, in a transaction that would value the company at $2.7 billion. If a deal is worked out, ChemChina would displace DuPont as the world’s sixth-largest producer of agricultural chemicals. Koor Industries, an investment company that now controls 47% of Makhteshim, says it has reached “preliminary principle understandings” on a transaction with the Chinese state-owned firm. Terms call for ChemChina to buy the 53% of Makhteshim shares now publicly traded and another 17% owned by Koor, giving the Chinese company a 70% interest in Makhteshim. Koor would retain a 30% interest. “The deal would be hugely beneficial to the Chinese firm,” says consultant Gautam Sirur of U.K.-based Cropnosis. It would give ChemChina access to markets in Europe and Latin America where Makhteshim is strong. A transaction would also benefit Makhteshim by providing access to ChemChina’s financial reso...

The repression that the Muslim Brothers suffered in the past -including a period of almost two decades when it was totally outlawed — has affected its attitudes toward the government, revolution, violence, and the ideology of the revolutionary fundamentalists. The Brothers have been successful at reestablishing their structure and maintaining their freedom only at the government’s sufferance, and their leaders are well aware of this. The relationship between the movement and the national leaders — Sadat, then Mubarak — has had a profound effect on the Brotherhood’s thinking. It now claims status as a legal, reform-oriented group trying to improve society rather than seize power.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, many Eastern European researchers abandoned their labs to find better jobs. Now a U.S. investment company and three partners have acquired a majority stake in a drug research institute in Budapest, Hungary, specializing in drugs for cardiovascular and central nervous system diseases. The companies hope to both develop the institute's own candidate drugs and serve Western drug firms looking for a way to test their products at lower cost.

PREVIOUS STUDIES [1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 14, 15, 18, 19] have demonstrated that, in a perfect market, recapitalizations may affect the absolute values of firms but would not alter the relative values of firms in a risk class. Using indirect tests additional studies [12, 13] have shown that with the introduction of market imperfections, specifically the impounding of funds from short sales, not only might absolute values of firms change, but in addition the relative values of firms in a risk class may be influenced by recapitalizations. Thus, it has been concluded that recapitalizations "matter". However, no predictions concerning "how" recapitalizations affect valuation and welfare have been derived. The reason for this omission is that, in general, implications for welfare of investors and vaulation of securities caused by arbitrary recapitalizations are ambiguous since these recapitalizations may affect the state dependent endowments of investors and/or the set of trading instruments available in the capital market. That is, it is impossible to predict the welfare and valuation implications of an arbitrary recapitalization without precise knowledge of investors' marginal rates of substitution before and after the recapitalization-clearly a monumental data problem. In this paper, I develop and test welfare and valuation predictions for a specific type of recapitalization-a neutral recapitalization-that avoids the data problems associated with an arbitrary recapitalization. A neutral recapitalization has the property that it does not alter the state dependent endowments of any investor. Using a partial equilibrium farmework similar to that used in Abnormal Performance Index (API) studies, I show that a neutral recapitalization that expands investors' trading opportunities would increase the value of the recapitalizing firm and the welfare of its shareholders. A case study of the recapitalization of Source Capital Inc., a closed-end investment company that became a dual-purpose fund, provides empirical evidence consistent with the theoretical predictions.

The risks of buying volatile issues (generally of low-priced stock) in a rising market can be reduced without sacrificing the potential for profit by buying the junior securities of companies with debt or preferred stock outstanding. The stocks of such “leverage” investment companies have advantages over ordinary low-priced issues because the risk of the company going bankrupt is low and because the stock will rise faster than the market will. The mechanics of leverage are the same as those of a margin account except that the investment company shareholder is not wiped out by a large loss (but has a permanent call on future recovery) and the leverage is automatically reduced as the market rises. Various leverage investment company stocks are suitable for different types of investors, but before being chosen for investment, the companies must be carefully analyzed, particularly as to the proper discount or premium of the prices.