J.P. Morgan's Retail Funds Now Bear Its Name

Hoping to appeal to retail investors, J.P. Morgan & Co. has changed the name of its proprietary mutual fund family.

Previously known as the JPM Pierpont Funds, the bank's retail portfolios on Tuesday were renamed the J.P. Morgan Funds.

The bank's institutional portfolios also got a new name, swapping JPM Institutional for J.P. Morgan Institutional.

The moves are designed to give Morgan's funds, which have $12 billion of assets under management, a brand name more closely aligned to the bank's corporate identity, said George C.W. Gatch, a vice president responsible for J.P. Morgan's U.S. mutual funds.

The old monikers may have been too arcane for the investing public to recognize, he said.

"People in the financial industry would know that JPM is the ticker for J.P. Morgan, or that Pierpont was the middle name of Junius Pierpont Morgan," Mr. Gatch said. "Outside, the JPM or Pierpont name was not well known."

The change also comes as J.P. Morgan prepares to close its $900 million deal this month for 45% of American Century, a Kansas City, Mo., mutual fund company with a large retail client base.

The day after announcing the deal, J.P. Morgan dropped the minimum investment for its Pierpont funds to $2,500, from $100,000.

J.P. Morgan's name change was only recently allowed by the Federal Reserve Board.

To prevent consumer confusion between mutual funds and insured deposits, member banks had long been barred from using similar names on funds.

A revised regulation last year, however, allows similar names as long as they are not identical and do not include the word "bank."

A host of banking companies adopted matching names for the proprietary funds last year, including Wachovia Corp. of Winston-Salem, N.C., which dropped the Biltmore Funds name for Wachovia Funds. Starting Feb. 1, Firstar Corp., Milwaukee, will call its portfolios the Firstar Funds, switching from Portico Funds.

"When launched in 1982, we would have liked to use the J.P. Morgan name on the funds, but we were unable to do so," Mr. Gatch said. "It's good timing as we've moved to make the funds more broadly available."

J.P. Morgan has recently begun to sell its funds through Charles Schwab & Co., Fidelity Investments, Jack White & Co., Merrill Lynch & Co., and Salomon Smith Barney.

"We're very proud to use the J.P. Morgan brand on our mutual funds.

It will greatly assist the broadened distribution of our funds in 1998," Mr. Gatch said.

But some observers questioned just how effective the new name will be.

In the general retail marketplace, "the branding that has meaning is American Century, not J.P. Morgan," said David B. Master, managing director of Optima Group Inc., an investment management consulting firm in Fairfield, Conn.

Mr. Master said the Morgan name is better suited to targeting affluent, self-directed investors, who could be reached through fund supermarkets and wirehouses.

"The challenge is creating a differentiated identity with the brokers," he said.

"That's where the Morgan name may have some play."

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