In the last decade, the number of mutual funds has tripled to more than 6,000 funds with more than $4 trillion in assets and more than 60 million individual shareholders. Yet there is no book on the mutual fund business designed for MBA and undergraduate business courses. The Mutual Fund Business, assembled by a leading industry expert, fills this gap. The book is divided into four parts. Part I contains a general introduction to mutual funds, a short history of the industry, and an overview of mutual fund regulation. Part II covers portfolio management of stock funds and bond funds, as well as execution of fund trades. Part III discusses the marketing and servicing of mutual funds in the direct, intermediary, and retirement channels. Finally, Part IV delves into more specialized topics: the financial dynamics of mutual funds, mutual funds as institutional investors, the role of technology in mutual fund complexes, and the internationalization of mutual funds. Each chapter contains not only a lengthy introduction and selected articles, but also a detailed case study or class exercise. An extensive teacher's manual, with a complete set of lecture notes, slides (on diskette) to support the lectures, answers to the review questions for each chapter, and an analysis of each case study is available for instructors who adopt the book.
