$95MM fund created here

Karen Bruton has a passion for international relief efforts, and she plans to use her earnings from a new $95MM investment fund to support Brentwood-based Just Hope International and related works. The story's here.

Morgan Keegan hiring

Showing it can attract talent even when some observers think parent Regions is in play, Morgan Keegan announced hiring oil-services and general equities analysts. Releases are here.

Vanderbilt Owen profs again eye NASDAQ trading

Owen Profs. Jacob Sagi and Robert Whaley created new Alpha Indexes derivative products that help investors cope with market volatility and price swings in highly liquid stocks or exchange traded funds. The Nasdaq release is here. Both men are at Owen's Financial Markets Research Center, where faculty have periodically influenced the markets' innovation, led by Director Hans Stoll. (The FMRC convenes a conference on human capital and finance, today at VU.)

GTx in $40MM stock offering

GTx, the Memphis pharma company, has filed for a $40MM gross proceeds offering, the MBJ has it.

UT endowment clawings its way back

The University of Tennessee endowment is now at about $563MM, after taking a Great Recession hit of more than $209MM in value and now having recovered more than $73MM of that loss. The KNS reports.

LP offers up 20.7MM shares

Something in the air? Louisiana-Pacific (NYSE:LPX), based here, today announced plans to offer up to 20.7MM shares of its common stock, and will use the proceeds to paydown debt and for other corporate purposes. The company has been buffeted by financial problems, as the housing market imploded.