Nissan Motor Corporation U.S.A., Gardena, Calif., has terminated Yamaichi Capital Management as manager of an $8.7 million non-U.S. equities portfolio for Nissan Motor's $180 million pension fund, said controller John French.
``We felt it was our fiduciary responsibility to (avoid) dealing with the uncertainty arising from the failure of Yamaichi Securities,'' Mr. French said.
He said the fund's other non-U.S. equity manager, Brinson Partners - which managed $19.9 million of non-U.S. equities for the fund as of Sept. 30 - will take over Yamaichi's portfolio.
Officials at Science Applications International Corp., Fredrick, Md., said the $1.4 billion 401(k) plan of recently acquired Bellcore Inc., Morristown, N.J. will remain separate from SAIC's 401(k) plan, at least temporarily.
Both plans use Vanguard as bundled provider. Matt Tobriner, SAIC senior vice president and chairman of the retirement plan, said the only change at Bellcore would be the addition of an SAIC company stock investment choice to the existing lineup of Vanguard funds. The SAIC 401(k) has $1.6 billion.
Walden International Group closed its Pacven Walden Ventures IV fund with $328 million raised from pension funds, endowments and foundations.
Investors include the pension funds of IBM Corp., AT&T Corp. and Bell Atlantic; the endowments of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Harvard University, University of Michigan and Northwestern University; and three foundations, the Ford Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Kauffman Foundation.The fund will invest in Asian companies and U.S. enterprises with potential business links to Asia.
401(k) Forum acquired the investment fund performance monitoring and tracking software products of Decision Analytics, which is exiting that business. Terms were not disclosed. 401(k) Forum provides investment advice to plan participants via the Internet. Stephen L. Deschenes, president, said the addition of the monitoring software will enable it to provide detailed fund information.
Wasatch Funds will debut its micro-cap value fund in January. The funds' comanagers, Robert Gardiner and Jeff Cardon, will normally invest at least 65% of the fund's assets in companies with market capitalizations below $300 million. Turnover in the fund will not usually exceed 100% annually. The fund will close to new investors when assets reach $200 million.
