Weekly briefs

Bidders line up for BT, Royal & SunAlliance closes some risk products, the latest Investment Trust news, TeNZ management contract for sale, CFP a winner in the US, but under siege in Australia.

Monday, April 26th 1999, 12:00AM

Nearly two dozen parties have expressed interest in buying BT Funds Management from Deutsche Bank.
At least 23 potential buyers have picked up information memorandums from the vendor.
This list will be whittled down in the next stage of the process when due diligence begins.

Royal & SunAlliance kills some Guardian Assurance products
Royal & SunAlliance has decided to stop offering some of the risk products offered by Guardian Assurance.
It has decided Smartplan will be retained while Term Plus and WiseCare will be closed to new business.

"Smartplan already provides all the benefits, and some more that Guardian was looking to add to Term Plus in the next few years," sales manager Tom Jackson says. "It is the market leader in the risk market and together with excellent remuneration package for brokers makes it an overall winner."
Proposals for Term Plus and WiseCare will not be accepted after June 30

TeNZ for sale
The New Zealand Stock Exchange is putting the management contract for its $195 million TeNZ passive fund on the market.
The exchange says managing the fund is not a core business. Rather it wanted to focus on core projects such as system upgrades.
Exchange managing director Bill Foster says while the fund has been highly successful, the exchange was not in the position to further develop it.
He says a professional fund manager would be better able to market the fund.
The NZSE sponsored the TeNZ IPO in May 1996 which was the birth of passive funds in New Zealand.

Electronic voting coming
Shareholders in UK listed investment trusts may soon be able to vote by post, telephone or over the Internet.
The Association of Investment Trust Companies is working with a United States company to implement such a service.

Its a big campaign
UK listed Investment Trusts are being asked to fund a £27.5mill advertising campaign, in a bid to rescue the £61bn sector, launched recently by the Association of Investment Trust Companies. The campaign, themed around the word "its" is designed to drum up awareness of Investment Trusts among private investors. The campaign aims to double the number of investment trust shares held by private investors, who are less likely to force trusts to wind up than institutions that currently own the lion’s share of the sector. The proposals aim to address the underlying problems of over-representation of institutions on share-holder registers and the comparative failure of the sector to take its share of the retail investment boom of the 1980s and 1990s in the UK. - Source CS First Boston

Electra clinches victory
Electra Investment Trust Plc has clinched victory against a £1.3 billion hostile bid from rival UK investment trust 3i Group Plc after shareholders, last week, narrowly voted to support a share buyback designed to frustrate the bid.
Electra’s victory was secured by a purchase of 1.6 percent of their shares by Swiss Reinsurance Co late last week. These shares enabled Electra to secure 76.15 percent of the votes cast, marginally more than the 75 percent needed to secure approval of the buyback plan.
3i had said in its offer document that it wouldn’t continue with its bid if Electra shareholders voted for the buyback; a 3i spokesman said the company was now considering its options. Electra will now buy back up to 40 percent of its shares and liquidate its assets over the next five years. It has borrowed £650 million to finance the share buyback, which will be repaid with asset sales. - Source CS First Boston

US planners merge and adopt CFP
The board's of America's two big financial planning associations have announced plans to merge
The International Association for Financial Planning (IAFP) and the Institute of Certified Financial Planners (ICFP) have been discussing merger proposals for the past 18 months.
Forming a new organisation, to be known as the Financial Planning Association, is contingent on receiving the approval of ICFP members.
The IAFP has 17,000 members in 23 countries and the ICFP has 13,000 in the US alone.
The new association will have four classes of membership and it "will embrace the certified financial planner designation as the mark that would become synonymous with financial planning."

Meanwhile in Australia the Institute of Chartered Accountants and the Australian Society of Certified Practising Accountants have chosen to establish their own financial planning mark, rather than adopt the CFP.
This move has upset the Financial Planning Association of Australia.

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