The Securities and Exchange Commission has granted temporary approval to a proposal by the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association-College Retirement Equities Fund to start a money-market fund.
As a condition of the approval, however, the s.e.c. said it would require the plan to permit member institutions to allow employees to put new contributions into other funds outside t.i.a.a.-cref.
The retirement fund--which serves many private-school teachers as well as college employees--has been under pressure from contributors to allow them more flexibility in their investment choices.
In what is seen as a victory for critics of t.i.a.a.-cref, the s.e.c. will begin hearings March 16 on the pension plan’s request to remain exempt from s.e.c. regulations on rollovers and transfers of assets, and on shareholder voting rights.
The fund, which has more than a million members, allows participants during premium-paying years to switch assets out of cref, the equity-investment portfolio, and into t.i.a.a., the fixed-income portfolio, as often as they wish. Under the fund’s current rules, at no time may investors move assets from tiaa into cref.
Once retirees begin drawing annuity income, they may not switch assets from cref to tiaa
Officials of the plan said demand for a money-market fund increased after the stock-market crash Oct. 19. Participants will be able to transfer cref funds into the new money-market fund as often as desired, but will not be allowed to transfer t.i.a.a. funds.
Walter H. Annenberg, former ambassador to Great Britain and the founder of TV Guide, has donated $10 million to the Peddie School in Hightstown, N.J.
Mr. Annenberg, who graduated from the school in 1927, placed no restrictions on the use of the funds. In announcing the gift last week, Peddie officials said the contribution would be spent on “people and programs.”
The donation brings the total of Mr. Annenberg’s gifts to the Peddie School to $30 million.
Three New England private schools have formed a corporation to promote instruction in Far and Near Eastern languages.
The Northfield-Mount Hermon School in Northfield, Mass., the Experiment for International Living in Brattleboro, Vt., and Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, Mass., will operate an institute for such languages at the Northfield campus. The venture has been named the Critical Languages and Area Studies Consortium Inc.
Its activities will promote the teaching of languages “critical to economic and political well-being of the United States,” including Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and Korean, said Richard P. Unsworth, headmaster of Northfield.--kg
