AT THE BELL

Scudder to Kemper to brokers

Scudder Kemper Investments Inc. is shifting three top-performing Scudder equity mutual funds to Kemper and selling them through brokers and other intermediaries. The Classic Growth, Global Discovery and Value funds all are now closed to new direct investors; existing shareholders, however, will be able to add shares without paying a load. Value has a top five-star rating from mutual fund appraiser Morningstar Inc.; Global Discovery gets four stars. Classic Growth hasn’t been around long enough to get a star rating, but it beat the Standard & Poor’s 500 index last year. The move is the latest in a series aimed at taking advantage of the merger late last year of no-load fund firm Scudder Stevens & Clark Inc. and load company Zurich Kemper Investments.

SEC would rein ‘alternatives’

Alternative trading systems like Reuters Instinet and Bloomberg’s Tradebook would have to register as stock exchanges or as broker-dealers under a proposal made last week by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The computerized trading systems now account for 20% of transactions in Nasdaq securities and 4% of transactions in listed securities — and for trading volume greater than that of the Amex and regional exchanges combined, the SEC says. Existing regulations do not require these systems to provide investors with access to best prices or allow for an audit trail, and there is potential for market disruption due to system outages, the SEC says. The SEC also proposed a new rule that would allow exchanges and the National Association of Securities Dealers to operate pilot trading systems for two years before seeking commission approval, and they would permit trading of new derivatives without commission approval.

In other SEC news, the commission reached a settlement with a former Chase Manhattan Bank vice president charged with insider trading for buying 400 shares of Lotus Development Corp. stock before IBM’s 1995 offer to buy Lotus at $60 a share. Robert Scott Jr., a member of the bank’s institutional trust group, which handled IBM’s offer for Lotus, neither admitted nor denied the charges filed in federal court in New York City, but agreed to disgorge $12,267 in profits from the stock and to pay a civil penalty of $12,267.

Babson mining for gold

David L. Babson & Co. is significantly stepping up its efforts to cater to the rich and famous. The Cambridge, Mass., money manager with nearly $20 billion in assets under management, is about to start peddling its services to wealthy investors through the more than 5,600 agents selling life insurance for its parent company, Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. The two companies signed a deal two weeks ago that calls for the agents to make referrals to Babson.

AMG’s CEO sitting pretty

William Nutt, 53, chairman and chief executive of Affiliated Managers Group Inc., saw his pay jump 23% last year to $842,390 in cash and benefits, not including 205,000 stock options worth more than $2.6 million, based on the Boston holding company’s recent trading price of $34.63. The options are exercisable over three to seven years. Though AMG — which went public in November — had an $8.3 million net loss last year, operating earnings tripled to $22.5 million, against $7.2 million in 1996. Its 11 affiliates managed about $50 billion at yearend.

Increasing southern exposure

The merger of two more of Canada’s largest banks — CIBC, Canada’s second largest bank, with No. 5 Toronto-Dominion Bank — will create the second-largest discount broker in the world. Toronto-Dominion’s Waterhouse Securities, combined with CIBC’s Investor’s Edge, will vault the discount brokerage operation past Fidelity Investments into the second spot behind Charles Schwab & Co. CIBC Oppenheimer & Co., the New York investment bank, gives the combined bank a major U.S. presence. Waterhouse has 1.3 million U.S. customers (it will gain 120,000 when its deal for Jack White & Co. closes), while Oppenheimer has 160,000, the banks said.

Etc.: Street cool to hot list

Shares of the nation’s hottest takeover names in financial services fell for for the week. Don’t believe investors have stopped speculating though, cautions one money manager. J.P. Morgan & Co. (closing at $144.50), PaineWebber Group Inc. ($47.93) and Merrill Lynch & Co. ($94.81) were all down for the week. They opened last Monday at $147.63, $45.31 and $99 respectively. Investors were merely taking profits, and on Friday stocks began to surge again, says Edward Hemmelgarn, president of $400 million-asset Shaker Investments Inc. in Cleveland. American Express Corp. was up on rumors after a story in Business Week had a money manager pricing it at $68 billion. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 9167.50, up 1.7% for the week, after topping 9100 for the first time on Monday . . . The Calvert Group has launched a socially screened “managed” index fund that tracks the Russell 1000 Index, with the exception of about 50% of the index’s stocks that don’t pass its social screens.

Corrections

* An April 13 article on Federated Investors misstated the amount of assets added through acquisitions since November 1996. The correct amount is $4.9 billion.

* An April 13 At the Bell item should have listed the number of workers participating in 401(k) plans as more than 25 million.