Legal actions against fund operators also rarely succeed.

Other big fund operators are shifting their selling strategies, too, in an effort to make their mutual funds stand out in an increasingly crowded field.

This could create serious problems for those fund operators with high fixed costs and whose income depends largely on fees from managing bond funds.

Some fund operators manage funds of all types, including money-market mutual funds.

Fidelity Investments, the nation's largest mutual fund operator, said it would lay off 226 workers because a slumping economy has weakened investor activity.

Most are hedge fund operators and professional traders.

George Soros, one of the most successful mutual fund operators of his generation, thinks of himself more as a philosopher than a money manager.

T. Rowe Price, like most other fund operators, has cut advertising expenditures to reflect the drop in sales.

The fear of some industry analysts, regulators and fund operators is that the push to create Chinese walls is already lagging behind the deal making.

But fund operators have discovered they can't rely too much on performance to draw investors.