Capital Group

Los Angeles-based Capital Group Cos., parent of the American Funds mutual fund group, plans to cut about 9% of its global workforce this month in its second round of layoffs this year. The company, one of the world's biggest asset managers, told employees this week that 820 jobs would be lost out of a total of about 9,000, spokesman Chuck Freadhoff said. Like many money managers, Capital Group has been shrinking staff as assets have dived with the stock market's plunge over the last 18 months.

The black BMW 750 looks out of place alongside all the Toyotas and Hondas in the parking lot of public radio station KPCC-FM (89.3) in Pasadena. The man who owns the sleek sedan also looks a little out of place. Wearing black pinstripes in a room full of khaki, Gordon "Gordy" Crawford is here to talk to the newsroom about the global economy. This is the same man who's considered to be one of the smartest guys in Hollywood, the influential investment fund manager best known for dispensing wisdom to the titans of media, entertainment and technology, not journalists.

The Los Angeles-based investment management firm said Morgan Stanley has agreed to acquire Capital International Perspective and Capital International Indices for undisclosed terms. The publications are used by brokers and asset managers to assess the financial performance of more than 1,600 companies worldwide. Capital Group, which manages assets of more than $20 billion, started the publications in 1969 as a way of providing standardized financial information for investors.

NEW YORK — Knight Capital Group's lifeline may have headed off the Wall Street brokerage's collapse, but it did not allay questions over the firm's future. The Jersey City, N.J., brokerage, whose business processes 10% of all U.S. stock transactions, received $400 million of new capital from a consortium of private equity funds and other major financial players. It will keep Knight in business after suffering massive losses last week when a software glitch sent out a stream of unintended trades.

Capital Group, the $60-billion-asset institution that is the Southland's biggest private money manager, is reshuffling some of its senior officers to make room for the next generation of top managers, the firm said Thursday. Six of the executives who brought the Los Angeles-based firm to prominence during the past two decades are forming a new partnership within Capital, while giving up administrative titles and duties to more junior officers beginning Monday.

The black BMW 750 looks out of place alongside all the Toyotas and Hondas in the parking lot of public radio station KPCC-FM (89.3) in Pasadena. The man who owns the sleek sedan also looks a little out of place. Wearing black pinstripes in a room full of khaki, Gordon "Gordy" Crawford is here to talk to the newsroom about the global economy. This is the same man who's considered to be one of the smartest guys in Hollywood, the influential investment fund manager best known for dispensing wisdom to the titans of media, entertainment and technology, not journalists.

Massachusetts' main state pension fund said Tuesday that it fired money management giant Capital Group Cos. because of poor returns, costing the Los Angeles company an account worth nearly $1 billion. The defection is the latest Capital has suffered from its Capital Guardian Trust unit, which at midyear managed about $95 billion in foreign stocks for institutional investors.

Capital Group Cos., the Los Angeles-based firm that runs American Funds, negotiated lower stock-trading commissions from brokerages last year as expenditures throughout the U.S. mutual fund industry came under more scrutiny, the company said Friday. The move cut expenses that are borne by investors in American Funds. Capital Group spokesman Chuck Freadhoff said the commission costs were lowered by roughly one-third in 2004, but he declined to disclose the dollar amount.

A divorce case is threatening to reveal financial details of Capital Group Cos., the $1-trillion-asset Los Angeles money management firm that has long kept its internal business affairs closely guarded. The privately held company plans to ask a Superior Court judge to restrict public access to certain documents and testimony in the divorce trial of Capital executive Timothy Armour and Nina Ritter, according to Ritter and others familiar with the case. Trial is set to begin Monday.

Most mutual fund companies would be thrilled with the kind of attention that Los Angeles-based Capital Group Cos. has attracted of late. Its stock and bond funds were the nation's most popular by far last year, taking in $66 billion in new cash, nearly twice as much as the next-best-seller, Vanguard Group. All of Capital's stock funds, marketed under the American Funds label, posted net gains in the five years through February, a period that included the worst bear market in a generation.

NEW YORK — Knight Capital Group lurched into the weekend with executives scrambling to find a buyer or secure emergency funding needed for survival. The battered trading firm was said to be meeting with private equity investors and rival financial firms about putting together a deal. Knight has been left cash-strapped after a software glitch caused $440 million in losses from erroneous high-speed trades this week. The brokerage did get a few boosts. Shares skyrocketed 60% on unconfirmed reports Knight secured a line of credit to stay in business through late Friday.

NEW YORK - A trading glitch led to some puzzling stock movements on Wall Street, prompting the New York Stock Exchange to cancel some morning trades in six companies' shares. The exchange found "irregular trading" in 148 stocks shortly after the opening bell Wednesday - problems apparently stemming from a technology issue at New Jersey brokerage Knight Capital Group. After conducting a review, the exchange's operator, NYSE Euronext, identified six stocks whose trades "will be busted" if executed at 30% or more above or below their opening prices.

Wall Street investment firms have not had the most successful initial public offerings in recent years — and Oaktree Capital Group may be no exception. Despite being highly regarded, the Los Angeles distressed-debt manager raised less in its IPO on Wednesday than planned. The company announced that it raised $380 million by selling 8.8 million shares at $43 each. That's at the lower end of its proposed range of $43 to $46 a share, according to an earlier filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Venture-capital fundraising in the U.S. plummeted 35% in the first quarter of 2012 - but the industry is hoping investors are just taking a breather before they begin pledging more funds in earnest. The total pot at the end of the quarter was $4.9 billion raised by 42 separate funds, including ones from Canaan Partners and Bain Capital Ventures. That's 9% fewer participating funds than the same quarter a year earlier, which raised $7.6 billion. The new data from the National Venture Capital Assn.

A group of money managers within TCW Group Inc. said Tuesday that they reached a deal with the Los Angeles company to split off their $11.5-billion operation. The agreement, which had been expected, will reestablish Crescent Capital Group as a stand-alone investment firm that provides debt financing to public and private companies. Crescent was co-founded in 1991 by Mark Attanasio and two other former executives of junk bond giant Drexel Burnham Lambert, which filed for bankruptcy protection in 1990.

Billionaire gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has addressed potential conflicts created by her broad holdings in businesses regulated from Sacramento -- distressed mortgages, oil exploration and alternative energy among them -- by suggesting that she would place her entire portfolio in a blind trust if elected. But unloading that political baggage may not be easy. Whitman's vast fortune is spread across scores of carefully guarded funds that function as money harbors for the world's wealthiest individuals, and they can't be liquidated quickly.

Capital Group Reports News Corp. Stake: Los Angeles money manager Capital Group Inc. reported to the Australian Stock Exchange that accounts managed by five of its subsidiaries together hold 9.1% of the stock of News Corp., the Sydney-based media company controlled by Rupert Murdoch. Gordon Crawford, media analyst for Capital Group, said the "passive, friendly investment" has been accumulated for clients over the last two years.

AT&T Sells Shares to Los Angeles Firm: NCR Corp. and American Telephone & Telegraph have agreed to sell 6.3 million shares of NCR privately to Los Angeles-based Capital Group as part of the phone company's purchase of the computer maker. The move would make Capital Group, an investment management firm, AT&T's largest shareholder after AT&T's acquisition of NCR takes effect in September.

Boutique investment banking firm Imperial Capital Group Inc. has filed to go public, hoping to tap investors' improved appetite for new stock issues. In a preliminary prospectus, the Century City firm proposed to raise as much as $150 million in a deal that would allow management to cash out a portion of its ownership stake. But besides that, and paying off a $10-million credit line, Imperial said it hadn't decided what to do with the money it would raise, other than use it for general corporate purposes.

Los Angeles-based Capital Group Cos., parent of the American Funds mutual fund group, plans to cut about 9% of its global workforce this month in its second round of layoffs this year. The company, one of the world's biggest asset managers, told employees this week that 820 jobs would be lost out of a total of about 9,000, spokesman Chuck Freadhoff said. Like many money managers, Capital Group has been shrinking staff as assets have dived with the stock market's plunge over the last 18 months.