At the Bell

Nuveen registers six tax-free funds

* Nuveen Investments in Chicago last week registered five new tax-free municipal bond funds with securities regulators, just two weeks after stock-shy investors poured $1 billion into its six newest muni funds.

Nuveen also pulled in $240 million at the end of January for another six muni funds it had registered in November.

The average muni fund has gained 1.4% this year compared with an 11.7% drop in the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index. Last year, muni funds gained 8.8% compared with the S&P 500’s 9.1% loss.

Nuveen manages more than $73 billion in assets, the bulk of which are fixed-income securities.

Merrill said to mull staff reductions

* Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. said Friday it was thinking about staff reductions across the board, according to news reports. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that Merrill was considering cutting 1,000 jobs in the brokerage group. A spokesman could not be reached Friday afternoon to comment.

SEC round table set on Regulation FD

* Representatives for corporations, the media, Wall Street, investors and securities lawyers will give their opinions next week on how Regulation FD is working. The Securities and Exchange Commission has scheduled a public round-table discussion for April 24 on the controversial regulation in New York’s Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House Auditorium.

Executives and financial officials from Intel Corp., Micron Technology Inc., Biomet Inc., EMC Corp., Pfizer Inc., and Colgate-Palmolive Co. are slated to speak at the daylong round table.

Media officials will include Floyd Norris, chief financial correspondent of The New York Times; Ron Insana, CNBC anchor; and executives from PR Newswire. Securities analysts from Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., Keefe Bruyette & Woods and Thomas Weisel Partners also are set to hold a panel discussion.

2 Fidelity managers start own business

* Two fund managers at Boston’s Fidelity Investments, Timothy Krochuk and Gregory Fraser, have quit to start their own investment management company.

John Chow will replace Mr. Krochuk as manager of the Fidelity TechnoQuant Growth Fund and the Fidelity Advisor TechnoQuant Fund. William Bower will succeed Mr. Fraser as manager of the Fidelity Diversified International Fund and the Fidelity Advisor Diversified International Fund.

Moody’s settles a documents case

* Moody’s Investors Service of New York announced last week that it had agreed to a settlement with the antitrust division of the U.S. Department of Justice. The case arose from an incident in 1996 involving the destruction of documents.

Under the terms of the settlement, Moody’s pleaded guilty to one count of obstruction of justice and agreed to pay a fine of $195,000. The individual who engaged in the document destruction is no longer with the company.

Also last week, M. Douglas Watson Jr., group managing director of public finance; Donald Noe, senior vice president for global ratings and research; and Kenneth J. H. Pinkes, senior vice president and chief credit officer, resigned effective May 15.

Moody’s, however, said the men had nothing to do with the destruction of documents or any obstruction of justice referred to in the plea agreement.

BDO Seidman hires Thornton’s ex-chief

* New York accounting firm BDO Seidman said Friday that Domenick Esposito, the recently ousted leader of principal rival Grant Thornton, will join the firm in the newly created position of vice chairman-special projects and assignments.

Just over a month ago, Grant Thornton’s executive committee forced Mr. Esposito to resign because of a disagreement on the firm’s direction, according to Bowman’s Accounting Report.