AT THE BELL

Schwab cuts off adviser trust

Charles Schwab Trust Co. has closed its doors to new individual accounts from financial advisers. And those already managing client trust assets at Schwab have until July 1 to find a new home for their accounts. The trust company instead will focus on its core business: providing trustee services for employee benefit plans. Schwab Trust doesn’t have the economies of scale to continue to maintain the $1.4 billion it currently has in adviser-managed trust accounts, according to a spokesman. Total assets at the trust unit stand at $15 billion.

Separately, a study to be released this week by Charles Schwab & Co. and Chicago-based Ariel Asset Management found that upper-income blacks are significantly underinvested and less prepared for retirement compared with affluent whites.

Taking stock options online

In its latest attempt to lure customers away from financial advisers, National Discount Brokers has begun allowing investors to exercise company stock options over the Internet. The New York firm has formed an alliance with AST Stock Plan, an affiliate of American Stock Transfer & Trust Co., a large transfer agency. The service is being offered to AST’s 200,000 accounts. National Discount says it’s the first firm to offer this service on-line. “We will be able to take that three- to five-hour operation and make it 30 seconds,” boasts William Karsh, president of National Discount. The subsidiary of National Discount Brokers Group Inc. serves just 1,100 of the 3.7 million accounts that actively trade on-line. Of the assets in those accounts, $100 million is overseen by registered investment advisers.

Gadfly still bugs BankBoston

Corporate gadfly Evelyn Y. Davis doesn’t give up easily. For the third straight year, shareholders attending BankBoston’s annual meeting will be asked to vote on her proposal asking the bank to disclose what it’s doing to attain “political neutrality.” Ms. Davis, who owns stock in 110 U.S. companies and attends up to 40 annual meetings a year, wants the banking company’s quarterly reports to state its policies are aimed at assuring that employees are not coerced to make political contributions. The bank, which sponsors three employee-funded political action committees that made a total of $57,864 in campaign contributions last year, is recommending shareholders vote no at the April 23 meeting. The bank says it’s already required to comply with federal and state laws governing political activity.

Venturing far from Gabelli

New York venture capitalist Francine Sommer is leaving Gabelli Multimedia Partners to head up a group of Internet-based angel funds for Wit Capital Corp., sister publication Crain’s New York Business reports. Ms. Sommer will launch the Angel Funds Group that will sell investment funds exclusively over the Internet. The funds will take minimum investments much smaller than the $500,000 venture capital norm.

Etc.: Small-cap value moves

While Dreyfus Corp. closed its Small Company Value Fund last week — the first fund it has ever closed to new investors — the Lexington Group sought to give its $12 million Smallcap Value Fund a new lease on life by broadening the fund’s mandate to invest in growth stocks in addition to value. The fund returned 11.01% year to date as of March 31. Lexington’s fund posted a return of 6.67% for the same period . . .What a tease! The Dow Jones crossed the 9000 mark once on Thursday and twice on Friday, but refused to close there. It finished on Friday at 8983.41, up 2.2% from the previous Friday. Poor CNBC. The business news network has been waiting with bated breath to run a 31/2-hour special when the Dow officially reaches that milestone . . . Kenneth R. Leibler hauled in a tidy $1.1 billion bonus in 1997, a $350,000 increase, for leading Liberty Financial Cos. Inc. through another bullish year. The base salary of the Boston money manager’s CEO climbed to $740,000 from $705,000 in 1996, according to the firm’s annual proxy statement filed last week.

Correction/Clarification

* A Page 1 story in the March 23 issue incorrectly identified a new subsidiary launched by New York City-based Wechsler Ross & Partners as “Simplicity.” The division is called Simplify LLC.

* A Short-Interest item on p. 23 of the March 30 issue compared the compensation package of American Express Financial Advisors chief executive Dave Hubers to that of Richard Goeltz, chief financial officer of American Express Co. The item should have made clear in the second reference that Mr. Hubers’s compensation numbers were from 1996 while Mr. Goeltz’s were from 1997.