AT THE BELL

Pioneer exec slashes stake

Pioneer Group Inc.’s chief financial officer, William H. Keough, sold 60,000 shares of the beleaguered firm’s stock last month for $1.5 million (based on closing stock values), according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Keough’s selloff Aug. 10 and 17 came as the stock price of the Boston money manager has fallen 45% in the past year because of disappointing results. Mr. Keough, 61, maintains he sold the stock to prepare for his previously announced retirement next year and that he still holds a considerable block of Pioneer shares.

The corporation last week announced a restructuring aimed at focusing its diverse operations — which range from mutual funds to gold mines — along industry lines, rather than geographic ones.

It also made a number of executive changes, the most significant being the elevation of Alan Strassman to vice chairman. Mr. Strassman, 59, a Pioneer director since last year, plans to divide his time between Pioneer and Boston’s Martingale Asset Management, where he is chairman. Mr. Strassman is expected to work closely with John Cogan, Pioneer’s 72-year-old chairman.

Winners and sinners

President Clinton’s Jimmy Swaggart-like admission that “I have sinned,” might have stabilized markets on Friday, but if he is forced out of office, investors’ confidence could quickly wane, suggests a monthly market study from Chicago consumer research firm Leo Shapiro & Associates Inc. It found that if the president were to leave office, one investor would bail out for every one who would jump in.

By contrast, when investors were asked what they would do if the market dropped 10%, seven said they would invest for every one who said they would divest. You’d think the crises in Russia and Asia would worry investors more than Clinton’s travails, but Mr. Shapiro says Americans don’t care about other countries: “They only care about what happens in the bedroom.”

Convergent makes another buy

Convergent Capital Management Inc. has acquired a 50.5% stake in fixed-income institutional money manager Sage Advisory Services Ltd. Co. in Austin, Texas.

Sage, with $350 million in assets under management, was founded two years ago by onetime Merrill Lynch & Co. managers Robert Smith III, 45, and Mark MacQueen, 39. Sage is the seventh affiliate for Chicago-based Convergent, a holding company whose affiliates manage $5.5 billion. Convergent is backed by Amway Corp. co-founder Richard DeVos, Conseco Inc. and other private investors.

Dereg bill gets a boost

The chances of financial services deregulation passing Congress this year improved dramatically Friday when the Senate Banking Committee, by a margin of 16-2, approved legislation allowing banks, securities and insurance companies to enter each other’s businesses.

The bill, which follows House legislation and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan in requiring banks to conduct new business through separate affiliates, faces a veto even if it passes the full Senate, since President Clinton backs Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin in wanting banks to be able to operate such businesses through subsidiaries. The two dissenters, Republicans Phil Gramm of Texas and Richard Shelby of Alabama, opposed the legislation on the grounds that it expands the powers of the Community Reinvestment Act.

Proxy battle at Bull & Bear

Karpus Investment Management, a fixed-income money manager holding a 16% stake in the closed-end Bull & Bear U.S. Government Securities Fund, is asking fellow shareholders to fire Bull & Bear and turn over management of the fund to Karpus. Karpus’ proxy, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission late last week, is a response to Bull & Bear’s recently announced plans to remake the conservative bond fund into a balanced portfolio with up to 35% in stocks, effective Oct. 19.

Karpus, a Pittsford, N.Y., firm managing $340 million mostly for institutions, says the $13 million fund is a chronic underperformer that consistently has traded at a discount to its net asset value. The fund closed Thursday at $13.81, a 7% discount to its $14.87 net asset value. Karpus is nominating Donald R. Chambers, a finance professor at Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., to the fund’s board.

Tom Winmill, co-president of the New York fund, declined comment on the filing, saying Bull & Bear Advisers Inc. would respond in its own filing. A shareholder vote could not take place until the next annual meeting, which hasn’t been scheduled. Last year’s meeting was in November.

Bull & Bear filed last year and again in July to invest up to 50% of the fund’s assets in stocks, but pulled that proxy last month. Instead, officials said, the firm will invest no more than 35%, an amount that doesn’t require shareholder approval.

Fund drops Pilgrim Baxter

Atlanta-based Enterprise Capital Management — a unit of Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York — has dropped momentum-style quantitative stock manager Pilgrim Baxter & Associates Ltd. of Oaks, Pa., as sub-adviser to its Enterprise Small Company Growth Fund, which has $20 million in assets. Shareholders recently approved a new management agreement with William D. Witter Inc. in New York. Pilgrim Baxter officials did not return calls.