The Journal News from White Plains, New York • Page 51

Section Business beat 3 Money markets 3 Mutual funds 4 Business Editor Nancy Blair: 694-5021 Gannett NewspapersSunday, March 1 1 998 EBB JN ran i i MurtMLwmmf SSI Investors gung-ho about new Roth IRA SUSAN ANTILLA more. "It is a very hot topic." At Legg Mason phone volume for IRAs and retirement plans is up more than 98 percent, compared with a year earlier, and IRA account openings have jumped 73 percent. T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. mailed 100,000 IRA kits to investors in January alone nearly double what it usually sends out and an additional 60,000 IRA kits containing a software disk at $9.95 each.

The Baltimore-based mutual fund company had a waiting list of 25,000 people who wanted the kits explaining the Roth. "(President) Clinton hadn't even picked up the pen and we were getting calls," recalled Douglas E. Harrison, Price's individual retirement products. Congress made the IRA far less attractive in 1986, but last year it revived it with a sweeping tax reform bill that makes the instrument tax deductible for a broader number of Americans. It not only re-energized the IRA, but created the Roth IRA, which experts say is too good to pass up for most investors.

Charles Schwab Washington Research Group estimates that Americans will sock away as much as $40 billion in IRA investments by the end of the year, nearly five times what they invested in 1996. "There is widespread agreement that it will increase the savings rate," said Greg Valliere, By Bill Atkinson The Baltimore Sun After languishing for years, the Individual Retirement Account has suddenly become the hottest investment vehicle around. Many investors wrote it off after Congress, more than a decade ago, restricted its most compelling feature: the tax-deductible contribution. But now, brokerage houses and mutual fund companies are being blitzed with calls from people who want information about IRAs especially the new Roth IRA. "It is ridiculous, every other phone call is about the Roth IRA," said Morry A.

Zolet, senior vice president of investments at Ferris, Baker Watts Inc. in Balti director at Charles Schwab Washington Research, a division of the San Francisco-based discount brokerage Charles Schwab Co. "The savings rate is so low now, this has got to help." Prudential Securities for example, is on pace to double the number of IRAs it opens this time of year, said Bill Starkey, retirement plan director at the financial services company. Tens of thousands of new IRA accounts have already been opened, and most of them are Roth IRAs, he said. About $1 trillion now resides in 41 million IRAs, but what once was a flood of new money had slowed to a trickle, until this year.

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 overnight took away one of the IRA's most attractive features, a tax deduction for all who invested in the instrument rich or poor. While anyone could still open an IRA, under the law, fewer investors qualified to take' a deduction. In 1986, investors plowed $38.3 billion in IRAs. But after the law changed, contributions plunged to $14.9 billion the next year, and they have continued to slide. But the Roth, named after Delaware Republican Sen.

William V. Roth chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is reviving the IRA. It has features that make it hard to pass up, investment experts say. Here's why: Although con-tribubutions to the Roth are not Please see ROTH, 2E marketing manager for managing ft til tl. mm m.

art b. mm mm a mw, mp. m. mmm ir" -v, v. Flash: Wall Street learns women have pohoney, too IAmong the startling discov-) of the late 20th century: can be cloned; pate and wine can clear your arteries; women can actually take charge of their own finances, i The latter fact, unearthed by the highest-paid marketing minds of Wall Street, has spawned a near revolution of selling to the 51 percent of the population that heretofore had been more closely linked to I tending to the electric bill to picking the sector fund i most likely to succeed.

1 (You don't have to take my word for it. Oppenheimer Funds asked 1,000 men and 1,000 women last fall who got stuck with the tedious tasks 'J3jte balancing the checkbook (it was women 62 percent of the time) and paying the bills Women 58 percent). Asked makes the investment Visions, though, and only 15 percent of women said they atone had the sole responsibil- 'Investment firms now have that the checkbook "Balancer can be a Lynch Co. is plan- Jlwig a national teleconference Jo)- women business owners in Jdline; a new Merrill women's site will be launched this 'jnonth. JThe Vanguard Group of Companies is a women's investing that will run on JSNBC on March Vanguard is xjkout to publish a booklet It0out women and investing, xpected to come out concur- I.rently with new information Jn women and investing on its site.

And Smith Barney Asset Management has a new service called Women Establishing a Lifetime of Financial Health, a marketing and women's edu- cation program. Ditto, ditto, in I one form or another, for all the other big-name brokers. Why women? No one can say exactly what woke up Wall Street to the po- Perhaps they sensed a savvy investor in someone who can balance a budget (44 per-cent of women told Oppen-ieimer they did that thankless jbb on their own; only 23 of the men did). A pickup women's commitments to 401(k)s at work could at least explain some of the new-found interest in women. Thirty-six Aa fan IBM technology alerts investigators to suspicious practices in the health care 3-D effects: IBM's FAMS uses 3-dimensional graphics to identify unusual billing.

The government estimates that fraud costs consumers and taxpayers $30 billion to $1 00 billion a year. industry By Phil Waga Staff Writer mm mmm weu until he met up with Ilia high-tech cop on the beat. I For nine years, Dr. Leon Kantor, I i 1 1 i a Long Island ear, nose and throat specialist, swindled more than $1.4 million from 11 health care suppliers, prosecutors said. It data to establish a norm.

What appears suspicious tqo many, tsts by bulahces that travel in excess of their competitors is then targeted for investigators to pursue. As medical procedures become more elaborate, insurance forms more complex and, most significantly, attempts at fraud more subtle technology packages from IBM and several other vendors are rapidly becoming the high-tech sleuths of the medical industry. The technology, with IBM's offering developed by scientists at the company's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown ij i i 3 But then the law in the form of IBM technology that flags questionable medical practices set its sights on him. Soon, Dr.

Kantor pleaded guilty. He's now serving a 10-month sentence in federal prison in ton fcfwwfi ri LMft t-mtlt MkDWMM HifM tpf Seeing a trend: This bar chart, based on database information, makes it easier to uncover medical providers who overcharge their patients. The technology was developed at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights. 'X fai (fr, percent of women now have such accounts, up from 29 percent in 1993.

Scary demographics surely helped form a base of an Lexington, Ky. He paid $1 million in fines. And he surrendered his medical license. The uncovered scheme: An exceedingly high number of billings for bronchoscopies, an invasive respiratory procedure. The doctor had billed as many as one per week per patient.

Experts say it's usually needed only once or twice a lifetime. Unraveling the case and others like it requires much more than uncovering a white-out here or the use of different ink there. A complex Heights, is still young and expensive. But as it matures, becomes less costly and word of its effectiveness spreads, experts add that high-tech's eyes will increasingly be used to detect fraud in other facets of life, as well. That is likely to range from how social services checks are spent to nabbing store employees pilfering cash registers.

"Technology is a vital weapon in our arsenal," said Louis Parisi, vice president of fraud detection and investigation at Empire Blue Cross and i-yr-M sq 1 ,59 ipvimmm. 5S-Ms, Lr't7--; -iia Cu KsQ ik rHL mi'JboJ Hitnt fe'fitf'io ri-i'iift-'tj trn 1 1" I af-t t' t. r-n 1 4 5n r. fnrtt nl'V i-. 1 Photos courtesy of IBM The technology can do what it would have taken an army of people to do in the past, and they still wouldn't have gotten the job done as quickly or nearly as well.

Ben Barnes, general manager of IBM's Global Business Intelligence Solutions, which markets the anti-fraud package Blue Shield, which uses IBM's anti-fraud package of software, hardware and consulting services from IBM first culls through an avalanche of similar cases and related alarming and realistic ij marketing campaign. Think about wives significantly out- living their husbands and sin-Z gle moms footing the financial and emotional bill of tending the kids, whatever the reason for Street's latest push, now I that the financial world's eyes I are opened, there's a pitch to women from every financial corner. And enough studies of the women and money issue to libit erate sociology professors ''1 from years of economic repres-; sjon. I' JScudder Kemper Invest- ments teamed with Long University to release a study last month that predict-td an ominous "tsunami" 'Idon't look it up it means -something like a tidal wave) of Xsjngle women at significant fi-nancial risk. The bottom line is that baby boom women are unprepared for re- tirement not exactly a se-' -yet, though the new details "provided the latest grim re- minder of the obvious.

Coming soon to a Scudder rep near you: how-to manuals and semi- nars for women shareholders. Up ClOSe and personal: The behavior of medical providers is compared here. IBM has sold about 30 of the packages to large insurance companies, HMOs and claims processors. Please see IBM, 2E Bonderman rides to rescue of corporate wrecks 1 as an assistant law professor at Tu-lane University in New Orleans. Then, filled with the spirit of the late 1960s, he worked as a civil rights attorney for the U.S.

Justice Department. In 1971, he made the leap into the corporate world, joining the high-powered Washington law firm Arnold Porter. In 1982, he came to Texas to help with the bankruptcy reorganization of Braniff International Airways. A year later, he teamed with Bass. For the next nine years, Bonder-man hunted for bargains for Bass before joining with another Bass aide, James Coulter, to form Texas Pacific.

The two led buyouts of Continental Airlines and America West Please see BONDERMAN, 2E ergy, food, consumer products and telecommunications companies. The Oxford transaction is standard procedure for Bonderman, a Harvard-educated lawyer who can fly through rock-and-roll licks on an electric guitar as easily as he skims a balance sheet. Bonderman, a former protege of Fort Worth, Texas, billionaire Robert Bass, likes to hunt for corporate wrecks and bring in veteran turnaround specialists to revive them. Like his tight-lipped mentor Bass, Bonderman, 54, declined to comment. Another path Bonderman followed an unconventional path into the turnaround business.

In fact, he started out in academia selling debt. Bonderman's partner in this venture is managed care veteran Norman Payson, who was approached by Texas Pacific a few months ago to help search for takeover targets in the health-care industry. Money-losing Oxford, which lost three-fourths of its market value amid billing problems, had the right ingredients. "We both became intrigued with the potential of Oxford," said Payson, the former chief executive of Healthsource Inc. who will serve as Norwalk, Connecticut-based Oxford's new CEO.

Best known for helping with the dramatic turnaround of Continental Airlines Bonderman's group has 8'massed a $2.5 billion investment portfolio that also includes en Texas financier hopes to revive Oxford, other health care companies By Loren Steffy Bloomberg News FORT WORTH, Texas David Bonderman made money picking up the pieces of failed savings and loans, depressed Sunbelt real estate and ailing airlines. Now he's targeting the health care business. The Texas financier leads Texas Pacific Group, which will invest $350 million for as much as 22.1 percent of Oxford Health Plans Inc. and help the rtianaged health care company raise another $350 million by im We both became intrigued with the potential of Oxford.JJ Norman Payson, Oxford's now CEO Who's smarter? Merrill Lynch says its latest survey shows that 57 percent of women said they feel knowledgeable about investing, compared with 78 percent of men. We're not sure how that jibes with the word from Oppen-: -helmer, where 46 percent of the Ven agreed to some degree I Please see ANTILLA, 2E.