SHORT INTERESTS: TIPS, TRENDS, OBSERVATIONS

Ouch! 140G cut for CEO

What a difference a year makes. Directors of Nvest LP last year trimmed chairman and CEO Peter Voss’s annual compensation by 5.7% or $141,500 to $2.36 million. That includes a $527,000 salary plus a $1.83 million bonus he received in 1998 for his identical posts at money management subsidiary Nvest Cos., according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

That’s a far cry from 1997, when his compensation rose nearly 37% to $2.5 million — including stock options worth $1.2 million.

Nvest Cos.’ pretax operating profit rose 18% to $164.5 million in 1998, despite a modest 8% increase in assets managed to $135 billion — substantially under the company’s 1997 asset growth of 25%.

But at T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. — where assets also expanded by 25% in 1997, and grew 14% last year — to $148 billion, chairman and president George Roche enjoyed a 5% pay hike. That brought his take-home to $2.54 million plus stock options worth at least $1.1 million. The Baltimore firm saw its pretax operating profit grow by 18% — just like Nvest — to $312.8 million.

A fund by any other name

Mutual fund manager Fred Kobrick knows a bad investment when he sees one so he’s dropping the post-hyphen part of the name of the Kobrick-Cendant funds.

Cendant, whose name — and stock price — became mud after massive accounting shenanigans surfaced nearly a year ago, evidently isn’t taking Mr. Kobrick’s move personally, judging by the proliferation of ads in financial mags featuring his ruminations on this and that. His flagship Capital Fund gained 72.5% for the year ended Jan. 31.

Summer stock

Wanted: New York investment managers with an eye to the future.

Your help is needed to acquaint the city’s high-school students with the wonderful world of finance. The New York FAST Track program has attracted more than 75 inner-city students this year, its largest group ever. They are learning how to evaluate companies using credit and investment analysis. They do research and build stock portfolios, then defend their selections. They are even learning to track trading.

Now, the program’s hoping to place the students in summer internships, reports InvestmentNews sister publication Pensions & Investments. If you can help with a job paying $8 to $10 an hour, call Sam Austin, the program’s developer and president of the New York chapter of the National Association of Securities Professionals. His number: (212)250-9364.