Fremont Investment Advisors Company

The shakeout in the sub-prime lending industry continued Monday, with more people losing their jobs and a prominent lender losing its name on a baseball stadium. Fremont General Corp. of Santa Monica said it had told "significant numbers" of its 2,400 home-loan employees to expect pink slips in two months. Company officials declined to say how many employees would be dismissed. Fremont is the latest lender to announce layoffs in the sub-prime market, which targets people with dented credit.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has initiated a formal investigation into trading activities at Fremont Investment Advisors, a small San Francisco-based mutual fund manager, according to a regulatory filing. The U.S. attorney general for the Northern District of California and the New York attorney general also have requested information from the firm, according to an SEC filing Friday. Fremont, which runs the Fremont Funds, said it was cooperating fully with the inquiries.

Affiliated Managers Group Inc. agreed to acquire $3 billion in assets under management from Fremont Investment Advisors Inc., a San Francisco company under investigation for improper mutual fund trading. AMG would get more than half of Fremont's $5.4 billion in assets under management. The deal includes 13 Fremont mutual funds, including the $807-million Fremont Bond Fund managed by Bill Gross, who also runs the world's biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co. in Newport Beach.

Fremont Investment Advisors of San Francisco has agreed to pay $2.1 million in restitution and $2 million in civil penalties to end a mutual fund market-timing case, New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer said Thursday. Fremont was accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Spitzer of allowing market timing and late trading of its mutual funds to benefit a few select clients at the expense of most investors, Spitzer said.