Wellington Management, a secretive institutional asset manager based in Boston, mistakenly placed a client's money into the wrong fund and was forced to pay $20m (€15m) to put things right, according to a report. The news comes after the company was forced to cut its staff in the face of a difficult period for the funds industry.

The pension funds of the Massachusetts branch of health insurer Blue Cross & Blue Shield, which manage $833m of assets, gave four mandates to Wellington, but all four were mistakenly placed into the same separate account according to US magazine Pensions & Investments.