Pacific Financial Research

Beverly Hills-based Pacific Financial Research, a $4.2-billion-asset money manager best known for its Clipper stock mutual fund, agreed to be bought by United Asset Management Corp. of Boston. Pacific Financial, led by veteran investor James Gipson, becomes the 48th investment firm in UAM's growing stable. Its firms, which operate mostly autonomously, manage a total of $175 billion in private money and mutual funds.

Beverly Hills-based Pacific Financial Research, a $4.2-billion-asset money manager best known for its Clipper stock mutual fund, agreed to be bought by United Asset Management Corp. of Boston. Pacific Financial, led by veteran investor James Gipson, becomes the 48th investment firm in UAM's growing stable. Its firms, which operate mostly autonomously, manage a total of $175 billion in private money and mutual funds.

Harry Chandler Williamson and Julia Huntington Pesek exchanged marriage vows in St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Wayzata, Minn. A reception followed at the Woodhill Country Club. The bride, a graduate of Sweet Briar College, Va., is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. C. Paul Pesek of Wayzata. Her father is president of Monitor Technology Corp. The bridegroom, a resident of Newport Beach, is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Norman B.

The skippers of the $7-billion Clipper mutual fund in Beverly Hills are abandoning ship, after two years of lagging performance. Managers James Gipson, Michael Sandler and Bruce Veaco, who have run the value-oriented stock fund since the mid-1980s, are leaving at the end of the year, the fund's parent company said Friday. Gipson, 62, is the founder of Pacific Financial Research Inc., the entity that serves as advisor to the Clipper and Clipper Focus funds.

The engagement of Emily Webb Williamson to Henry Lea Hancock and plans for their wedding in July have been announced by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Norman Bruce Williamson of San Marino. The bride-elect, a graduate of Thacher School and of USC, is affiliated with Kappa Kappa Gamma and the Spinsters. She is employed in the clothing industry. Her father, a great-grandson of Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, founder of the Times Mirror Co.

All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena was the setting for the nuptials of Emily Webb Williamson and Henry Lea Hancock. A reception followed in the home of the bride's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Norman Bruce Williamson of San Marino. The bride, a graduate of Thacher School and USC, is affiliated with Kappa Kappa Gamma and the Spinsters of Los Angeles. Her father, an investment counsel with Pacific Financial Research in Beverly Hills, is a great-grandson of Gen.

The team steering the Clipper mutual fund is charting its own course. In a surprise move, the board of Beverly Hills-based Clipper is expected today to announce that it is severing ties with the fund's management company and instead hiring a firm that has had no connection to the fund. Analysts called it an unheard-of development in an industry in which "independent" directors rarely live up to that billing.

ADDRESS: 3545 Harbor Blvd., Costa Mesa BUSINESS: The company designs, makes and sells mass storage peripheral controller and communications multiplexer products for use with minicomputers and microcomputers. ASSETS: $85.2 million (July 3) NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 863 TOP EXECUTIVES: Name Position Fred B.

Gary Pilgrim, a highflying mutual fund manager in the 1990s, Thursday became the latest money manager to be charged with wrongdoing in the fund industry's burgeoning trading scandal. Pilgrim, who co-founded the PBHG fund group, was charged with civil securities fraud in separate complaints filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission and New York Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer. Also charged were Pilgrim's partner, Harold Baxter, and their firm, Pilgrim Baxter & Associates.

Shares of major U.S. mutual fund companies got a boost Monday after another of their peers agreed to a takeover by a foreign firm. United Asset Management (ticker symbol: UAM) of Boston soared $3.17, or 15%, to $23.73 after London-based Old Mutual agreed to pay $1.46 billion in cash, or $25 a share. Among other fund firms that have been viewed as potential takeover candidates, T. Rowe Price Associates (TROW) rocketed $5.63 to $48, Alliance Capital (AC) gained $1.94 to $50.

Corporate marriages, propelled by high stock prices, ready financing and rising economies, are poised to shatter the record for mergers set last year. Global mergers and acquisitions totaled $564 billion in the first nine months of the year, a 43% increase from a year earlier and just shy of the $575 billion in 1994, the full-year record, according to preliminary information from Securities Data Co., a Newark, N.J., company that tracks mergers.