Capital Group

A pension board appointee of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa may have violated city law by accepting a campaign donation from a Los Angeles businessman whose client sought a $10-million investment from the board. Kelly Candaele, who served until three weeks ago on the board of the Los Angeles City Employees' Retirement System, received $1,000 on Dec. 2 from Dan Weinstein, managing director of Wetherly Capital Group. That firm pitches investments to city and state pension boards.

A Los Angeles investment firm run by a well-known Southern California political operative has become ensnared in a widening probe into the fees paid to advisors who help place investments in public pension funds. Wetherly Capital Group has come under scrutiny for a $313,750 payment it made to a firm run by a New York political advisor who was arrested last month on charges of running a kickback scheme involving New York state's pension fund.

State prosecutors got a green light Friday to continue their fraud case against the Los Angeles-based company that manages American Funds, the largest U.S. stock and bond mutual fund group. A California Court of Appeal panel in Los Angeles ruled that Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown had the right to pursue the state's 2-year-old suit alleging that the fund company failed to adequately explain to its shareholders how it compensated brokerages that pitched its products. Capital Group Cos.

Altra Inc., a Los Angeles-based biofuel company, said it received $50 million in financing from a group of private investors including venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, a founder of Sun Microsystems. Altra, founded in 2004 as Malibu Capital Partners Inc., acquires and develops projects using renewable energy, including ethanol and biodiesel. The investors are Khosla Ventures, Angeleno Group, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Omninet Private Equity and Sage Capital Partners.

The divorce trial of an executive with Los Angeles-based investment giant Capital Group Cos. will be partly closed to the public to prevent disclosures about the firm's inner workings, a Superior Court judge decided Monday. The ruling was a victory for the privately held company, which manages more than $1 trillion for clients worldwide. The firm has long closely guarded details of its own finances, including its revenue and profit.

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.

Seventy-four years is a long time for a financial services company to go without making some big, highly embarrassing blunder. That may explain a lot about the defiant reaction of Los Angeles-based Capital Group Cos., parent of the American-brand mutual funds, as three regulatory agencies bear down on it for alleged violations of securities laws.

Eight investment funds in the Los Angeles-based Capital Group family have sued Honeywell International Inc., saying fraudulent financial projections in a 1997 bond sale cost them more than $130 million. Investors purchased the bonds issued by Florida-based Breed Technologies Inc. based on "false and misleading" statements from AlliedSignal Inc., the lawsuit claims. AlliedSignal acquired Honeywell Inc. in 1999 and changed its name to Honeywell International Inc.

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.

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.