SHORT INTERESTS: TIPS, TRENDS, OBSERVATIONS

Truth and Fidelity

Hell hath no fury like a mutual fund company scorned. Just ask Steve Bailey and Steven Syre of the Boston Globe. Their November Boston Capital column questioned how one of Fidelity Investments’s hottest funds, Emerging Growth, was beating its peers by such wide margins, and accused fund manager Erin Sullivan of “style drift” — buying securities that are outside a fund’s charter, in this case large company stocks like Microsoft Corp. for a fund classified as mid-cap.

Fidelity’s head spokesman, Thomas E. Eidson, immediately dashed off a letter accusing the two Steves of `boldly editing’ out key phrases from the fund’s prospectus, like where the fund reserves the right to invest in companies of any size. Mr. Eidson said Fidelity would stop talking to the naughty columnists unless they delivered Ms. Sullivan a written apology. Instead, they published Mr. Eidson’s scathing letter in its entirety.

Fast forward a few weeks: the journalistic duo is broken up. Mr. Bailey — the one who penned that particular piece, will write a column covering local businesses. Mr. Syre will continue to ink Boston Capital. Mr. Bailey, a 17-year Globe veteran, insists the change has nothing to do with the Fidelity brouhaha. “I could have continued writing the Boston Capital column,” he says. “I’m excited about the opportunity to write my own column.”

Meantime, Fidelity is suddenly eager to resume cordial relations with Boston Capital. “I’d like to patch things up,” says Mr. Eidson. “The way things are isn’t doing any of us any good.”

Paul Allen as Shaman

Microsoft billionaire Paul Allen may not have been throwing money at his pro basketball team in recent weeks, but he was still putting his dough to good use.

With his Portland Trail Blazers idle during the since-ended National Basketball Association lockout, his Vulcan Ventures fund, based in Seattle, was busy putting money to work. It committed half the $7.2 million raised in a private offering by biotech company Shaman Pharmaceuticals Inc., reports InvestmentNews sister publication Pensions & Investments. In an unusual twist, the South San Francisco company is donating 3.6% of the future sales of its SP-303 Provir drug to charities that help people with AIDS/HIV.

Two New York firms put in around $1 million each: Brown Simpson Asset Management and the Odyssey Fund at Rockefeller & Co.

Susan Pierson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Allen, says he invested “because it fits his strategy of investing in companies that work on products with promise. The fact that the company is contributing to AIDS is a wonderful bonus.”

Pass the cream cheese

Somehow we don’t think this was intended for our eyes. A fax arrived from a Washington-based financial firm listing a “tentative press event schedule” for Jan. 14. The 8-to-8: 45 a.m. slot calls for a “press roundtable” with a top exec. It then says: “May need to serve breakfast to get press there.”

Well, we’re sure not in this for the money.