WEEK IN REVIEW

Chairman Greenspan’s bank shot

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan didn’t mention the economy in a speech at an annual conference in Chicago, but he did basically say that banks, like Ronald Reagan’s fabled welfare queen, shouldn’t expect a government safety net to keep them driving Cadillacs to the supermarche.

“The expectation that national monetary authorities or international financial institutions will come to the rescue of failing unsound investments clearly has engendered a significant element of excessive risk-taking,” Mr. Greenspan said in his inimitable, un-Reaganesque prose.

He added — Wake up, Chicago audience! Ancient literary reference coming! — that international interbank loans are “potentially the Achilles’ heel of the international finance system.”

Three for fee

Three of the hottest hands in the fund biz have been gathered together, each to pick 10 stocks for adviser SunAmerica Asset Management.

This time it’s Elizabeth Bramwell, Tom Marsico and Spiros (Sig) Segalas, each of whom is beating the market this year with no-load funds. Their trio is called the Style Select Focus Fund and they can buy and sell whatever they want (overlapping is fine) as long as each keeps 10 stocks going.

It’s the adviser’s ninth three-manager fund, a project that started in November 1996. “It’s the best surrogate to going out and picking your own individual securities,” says Steve Neamtz, a SunAmerica executive vice president.

The catch? Oh, yeah. There’s a 5.75% load.

Way down south in land of sheep

Vanguard Group, traditionally as leery of entangling alliances as George Washington, is kangaroo-hopping into a 50-50 venture with Australia’s Lend Lease Corp. The new company, called Plum Financial Services Ltd., will target sponsors of corporate and government pension plans. The Valley Forge, Pa., index fund expert, which already handles $3 billion in greenbacks for corporate clients Down Under, is among the many money managers expecting Canberra to mandate that employers contribute 6% of workers’ salaries to their personal pension plans. The figure could be as high as 9% in four years.

How does your Garden State grow?

New Jersey, already home to the New York Giants and the New York Jests (sorry, that’s Jets), isn’t satisfied with trying to nab the Yankees as well. Now it’s the Stock Exchange they’re after.

Dick Grasso’s bunch is getting static in New York City on its plans to expand across Broad Street, at the corner of Wall, so ever-eager Jerseyans are ready with an offer of a billion-dollar trading floor. Nasdaq, on the other hand, is trying the carrot method, dangling the possibility of moving its electronic market from Washington in hopes of getting land in the World Financial Center.

New Jersey hasn’t chimed in yet with the offer of a nice swampy field in Secaucus, but stay tuned. Any state that could hold a Stanley Cup victory parade in a parking lot (asphalt is the official state plant) has enough imagination to build a ballpark atop two stock exchanges.

No Schmaltz

Schmaltz & Co. PC, a Southfield, Mich., accounting and management consulting firm, is changing its name to Clayton & McKervey PC. It’s not anti-chicken-fatism; founder Donald E. Schmaltz has been succeeded by a half-dozen people, two of whom are named Clayton and McKervey.

Stocking it away

Trim Tabs Financial Services Inc. reported $8.81 billion in net inflows to domestic stock mutual funds in the week ended May 1. The week before, the funds pulled in only $280 million.

Junk bond funds gained $60 million, while muni funds lost $410 million and Treasury funds dropped $235 million in the May 1 week.

Appealing? How appalling!

Former New York Mercantile Exchange chairman Zoltan (Lou) Guttman didn’t like the five-year ban from trading that a Commodity Futures Trading Commission administrative law judge imposed on him, so he appealed.

Bad move, Lou.

The commission took one look at his transgressions, which involved a plot to prearrange trades at the Coffee, Sugar and Cocoa Exchange in New York, and banned him for life. To add injury to insult, it also upheld a $500,000 fine.

Dalbar yields

As predicted (InvestmentNews, April 27), Canada’s richest man, Lord Thomson of Fleet, has folded Dalbar Inc.’s publishing business into his financial news omelette.

It’s the 10th purchase Thomson Financial Services has made this year, giving its securities division more than 50 newsletters, journals, magazines, directories, matchbooks and other stuff to read.

Dalbar’s president, Louis Harvey, said in Boston that the sale will allow his staff to “focus our attention on our core research business.” The price wasn’t disclosed.

Around the globe

Silver mining companies led the Casablanca All Share Index up 1.6% after Warren Buffet forecast global demand outstripping production. Of all the silver mines in all the towns in all the world. . . Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said he’s trying to reduce interest rates but international bankers are keeping them up. Can’t imagine why.

Bloomberg News contributed to this report