Today in Globe Business

Fund firm behavior faces state scrutiny

Secretary of State William F. Galvin is investigating Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.'s relationship with a hedge fund operation that lost $3.3 billion to admitted swindler Bernard L. Madoff.

Galvin, who oversees the state Securities Division, said his office is looking into MassMutual as part of an ongoing probe of investment firms that placed clients' funds with Madoff. The division is examining whether MassMutual did enough to safeguard its customers' money.

Springfield-based MassMutual owns Tremont Advisers Inc., a Rye, N.Y., hedge fund firm that sustained the second-biggest loss of all the confessed swindler's clients.

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Hub music venues land in local hands

Music impresario Don Law's newest act is a reprise of his earlier career.

The longtime rock 'n' roll promoter, who cut his music business teeth in the 1970s pushing bands at the Commonwealth Avenue nightspot the Paradise, is returning to own some of Boston's most prominent music venues.

Yesterday Law and his onetime partner, David Mugar, teamed again, this time to buy the Boston Opera House and the Orpheum Theatre from the concert management giant Live Nation Inc. for $22.5 million. As part of the deal, Law again will own the club where he made his mark, the Paradise.

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Putnam's Reynolds urges protection for retiree savings

With Americans increasingly anxious about their retirement savings, the head of one of Boston's best-known mutual fund companies wants the federal government to better protect plans such as the 401(k), going so far as to guarantee payments for retirees' golden years.

Putnam Investments' chief executive, Robert L. Reynolds, said that with nest eggs decimated by the stock market's collapse, and companies cutting back or eliminating matching retirement contributions because of the recession, regulators and industry leaders need to step forward with new measures to safeguard 401(k) accounts and to help restore the savings in them.

"The market downturn provides an opportunity to make changes," Reynolds said. "401(k)s are here to stay, so let's make it the best system possible."

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Medical tech leader is upbeat about reform

The head of the largest medical technology trade group in the United States told Massachusetts medical device executives yesterday that he is optimistic about the prospects for healthcare reform in the first year of the Obama administration.

Stephen J. Ubl, chief executive of the Advanced Medical Technology Association, known as AdvaMed, said White House officials "have made a calculation that healthcare has more of a political payoff than energy in the short term." They've also "paid a lot of attention to the Clinton reform debacle" of the early 1990s, so as not to repeat the mistakes of the last Democratic administration, Ubl said.

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Hologic is delaying US launch of 3D X-ray system

Investors dumped shares of Hologic Inc. yesterday after the Bedford medical device company said it would delay the US launch of a three-dimensional mammography system considered key to Hologic's business, after federal regulators signaled they were not ready to approve the product.

In an update accompanying its second-quarter earnings, released after the stock market closed Monday, the company said that it will push back its US launch of the next-generation X-ray system, called tomosynthesis, after conferring with Food and Drug Administration officials last month.

Hologic initially planned to ask the FDA for approval in June. The company's statement, however, cited changing personnel and regulatory requirements at the federal agency which "have created considerable complexity in the approval process."

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