At the Bell

CFP narrows hunt for chief of unit

* The search for a new president of the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards has been whittled down to about five candidates.

After interviews with 10 or so applicants, the Denver-based CFP Board’s six-member search committee is now preparing for a second round.

While no timeline has been set for completing the search process, a board spokesman says the search committee will end up recommending one name to the board of governors.

The new president will replace Robert Goss, who resigned last summer.

IPO class actions hit Wall St. houses

* Some of Wall Street’s top investment banks, including Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Credit Suisse First Boston Corp., were named in class actions last week over their roles in initial public offerings of formerly hot tech stocks.

In the suit against Morgan Stanley, the plaintiffs allege that the firm spread false and misleading information about the IPO of Ariba Inc., a co-defendant in the suit.

Ariba, a business-to-business and e-commerce software company, was launched in summer 1999. Over the past year, it has hit highs of $173.50. Last Friday morning, it traded at $7.51.

The other suits voiced similar grievances about other IPOs. Spokesmen with the investment houses declined to comment.

In a separate development, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday that two senior employees at Credit Suisse First Boston involved with technology IPOs have been put on leave in the wake of probes by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the National Association of Securities Dealers.

The regulators are investigating how Wall Street brokerage houses awarded shares in hot IPOs to investors.

MetLife folds unit into GenAmerica’s

* In a move aimed toward increasing sales of life insurance and annuities through independent brokers, MetLife Inc. is folding its brokerage distribution operation into the independent brokerage unit of GenAmerica Financial Corp., the St. Louis insurer acquired by MetLife last year.

The two units generated $56 million in new reoccurring life insurance sales last year, or 11% of New York-based MetLife’s $516 million in such sales.

MetLife’s brokerage operation unit will remain in Boston through at least yearend, according to a company spokesman.

Kenneth Martinelli, senior vice president and head of the Boston unit, will report to Kevin Eichner, president and CEO of GenAmerica.

Treasury secretary assails tax code

* Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill said Friday the time has come for a top-to-bottom overhaul of the U.S. tax code, calling the current system “an abomination.”

“Everyone in America knows this is not worthy of intelligent thought, and we need to fix it,” he said.

He added in an interview with CNBC that the goal of tax reform should be to cut the tax code’s “9,500 pages down to 95 pages.”

“God didn’t create this tax code,” he said. “It was created by a bunch of people in Congress. We need to fix it.”

Weak economy data expected this week

* Banc of America Capital Management in San Francisco predicted that more bad economic news would be announced later this week.

“Brace for a possible jump in the Employment Cost Index, due to higher health-care costs, on Thursday,” the company stated in its weekly economic report.

“Then, on Friday, look for another soft center in terms of economic growth, with real GDP expanding by only 1% during the first three months of 2001.”

Investors would be willing to tolerate any current imperfections in products or earnings if companies would give assurances of better results ahead, the report concluded.