FOR SOROS, IT’S STILL QUANTUM BLEEP

Don’t feel so bad if your first quarter wasn’t all that scintillating: You probably did better than George Soros and Julian Robertson.

Mr. Soros’ $6.9 billion Quantum Fund dropped 15.5% of its net assets in the three months since the New Year’s babe made an appearance; Mr. Robertson’s Tiger Management LP did less than half as badly, seeing only 7.5% of its assets sublimate into thin air.

In their defense, these are hard times for such macro hedge funds, which invest in anything. And of course it wasn’t until last week that the Dow Jones Industrial Average surged past 10,200 intraday, partly inspired by a 0.5% prime rate cut by the European Central Bank.

Scudder shakeup

Scudder Kemper Investments Inc., one of the country’s top 10 money managers with $280 billion to look out for, has a new looker-outer.

Cornelia Small, 54, a 30-year veteran, was named chief investment officer of global stock and bond groups by chief exec Edmund Villani. She had headed the stock group. Her opposite number in the bond group, Helen Frame Peters, 51, left to “pursue other opportunities.” Ms. Peters just arrived a year ago from Colonial Group in Boston, where she had been chief investment officer.

New York-based Scudder, owned by Switzerland’s Zurich Financial Services Group for 16 months, has been a so-so performer, with its average stock fund ranking eighth among the ten biggest fund groups and its average bond fund fifth, according to Kannon Block Carre, a Boston fund research outfit.

Oil right

Canadian oil company Bow Valley is doing the Maple Leaf Rag on U.S. trade sanctions with Iran. It and French oil producer Elf Aquitaine SA announced a $300 million six-year deal to drill for oil in the Persian Gulf off the island of Bilal with the full support of the Canadian government. Those laughmeisters in Teheran said American companies are free to bid for future projects.

Maybe they will. Mobil Corp. is running newspaper ads urging Washington to approve a grain deal with the ayatollahs. Can oil be far behind?

No accounting for infighting

It’s not often that good, gray accountants get to use the term “destructive nature” in describing their relationship with a Big Five rival, but that’s what Arthur Andersen did in calling off the planned merger of its Canadian practice with that of KPMG International.

What got ol’ Artie’s goat is that a KPMG Canada’s vice chairman, David Knight, won an injunction in Ontario provincial court holding up the deal, which would have tripled Andersen’s Canadian business. The firms issued a joint statement saying they feared that the Canadian practice would probably fall apart anyway. KPMG Canada’s top dog, J. Spencer Lanthier, favored the deal; KPMG International’s biggest cheese, Paul Reilly, didn’t.

Double Scotch

Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co. will build a operations center for its European business in Cumbernauld, not too far from Glasgow, Scotland. It will provide jobs for 1,000 when it’s finished in five years.

Rival J.P. Morgan & Co. Inc. announced plans for an $11 million European software center in Glasgow that will employ 300 engineers when it’s up and running in 2002.

Speaking of the U.K., institutional stockholders of British-controlled SmithKline Beecham Ltd. are threatening revolt at this month’s annual meeting. It seems the large £s in stock options and bonuses chief druggist Jan Leschy has been taking home are making them radically increase their intake of the company’s Zantac and Tagamet.

Hey, stiff upper lip, mates. His take is only $105 million over eight years. Sure, that’s $10 million better than Baltimore Orioles outfielder Albert Belle would do if he had a eight-year contract, but that kind of money won’t even get you near a seat at the heavy hitters’ table on Wall Street.