Bloomberg News
TORONTO - Royal Bank of Canada has lost $678 million of assets under management since one of its subsidiaries, RT Capital Management Inc., settled a stock trading scandal and brought in former federal government Finance Minister Michael Wilson as chief executive, the Globe and Mail reported Thursday.
Last month RT Capital agreed to pay a $2 million fine to settle charges with the Ontario Securities Commission that nine of its employees artificially inflated the closing prices of stocks traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange from October 1998 to March 1999. Six of the nine employees have resigned, including then-CEO Tim Griffin.
According to the Globe and Mail, Mr. Wilson said that 16 of the money manager's 700 clients have closed their accounts because of concern about the fund's behavior, and that RT Capital had picked up 10 new clients with $169 million in assets.
Assets under management at RT Capital fell $600 million in July from the previous month, to $25.1 billion. In June the National Post reported securities regulators were investigating the bank's pension fund unit for stock manipulation.
Mr. Wilson, 62, spent the last seven years at Royal Bank's RBC Dominion Securities Inc.
