OUR GANG OF 71: SEE HOW IT GROWS

Wealth managers, unite.

When the year began, a group of advisers – dubbed the Gang of 71 – that had banded together to challenge mutual funds to treat them more as institutions than as retail investors were licking their wounds after the industry told them to, in effect, get lost.

They quickly regrouped and began identifying other like-minded “wealth managers” out there for the purposes of forming something akin to a special interest group.

The Gang of 71 since has received more than 100 adviser responses to the surveys it distributed and plans on an organizational meeting sometime this year. But its leaders have striven to keep a low profile to avoid inflaming mutual fund firms or other advisers.

“I’m a little concerned the mutual fund industry feels we’re going after them,” says Deena Katz, a Coral Gables, Fla., adviser who is one of the leaders of the organizing effort. “I’m not. These guys helped put us in business. I’m not upset with them, and I’m not gunning for them.”

Still, some of these wealth managers – who define themselves as buy-and-hold investors who believe in fiduciary relationships with clients and full disclosure of compensation – are interested in forming a buying group to negotiate better terms from mutual funds. Others want sophisticated educational presentations on topics like behavioral finance, estate planning and tax strategies.

Indeed, a possible initial gathering may take place in June in Chicago when Dallas-based Undiscovered Managers Funds hosts what it’s billing as a symposium for wealth managers on behavioral finance.

The most likely outcome, Ms. Katz says, is the formation of a formal wealth manager group affiliated with one of the large adviser associations – the International Association for Financial Planning, the Institute of Certified Financial Planners or whatever emerges from those two groups’ merger talks.