Alternative investments

John Hancock Funds announced Monday it has completed the adoption of Fiduciary Management Associates' FMA Small Company Portfolio, and has launched it as the new John Hancock Small Company Fund.

BlackRock Inc. announced in a regulatory filing that it plans to introduce a portfolio to give high-net-worth investors access to difficult-to-obtain hedge funds.

Symetra Life Insurance Company has launched a group variable annuity for the 403(b) and 457 marketplaces, with schools and nonprofits in mind.

Despite heavy losses in their portfolios, most high-net-worth investors are sticking with their financial advisers, according to the Northstar/Sullivan Rebuilding Investor Trust Survey.

Fund managers are betting that emerging markets will be the best place for growth in 2010, due to their lack of correlation to the rest of the world and its sluggish, forecasted recovery, but lower correlation does not mean greater safety.

American Century Investments is a brand-new player in the international wealth management business-and that novelty could be an ace up its sleeve, according to the company's top executive.

Charles Schwab Investment Management announced Friday that trading has begun in two new exchange-traded funds, with no online trading commissions for Schwab clients and low operating expense ratios.

The majority of high-net-worth investors have stuck with their financial advisers despite heavy losses to their portfolios as a result of the financial crisis that have left them “highly distrustful and disillusioned."

While it may be too late for the Securities and Exchange Commission to pass any new regulations before the end of the year, financial experts anticipate major financial legislation and regulation to occur sometime in early 2010.

In the "new normal" that follows this recession, exchange-traded funds will be ideally positioned for a new world of lower expenses, lower returns and exposure to a wide variety of asset classes, experts say.

A majority of brokers and advisers support and understand key elements of the fiduciary standard, a survey of nearly 900 professionals by SEI Investments found. Eighty-six percent of advisers and 53% of brokers agree with the statement that, “All financial professionals who give investment and financial advice should be required to meet the fiduciary standard.”

The Spectrem Millionaire Investor Confidence Index rose five points in November to minus 10, putting it in neutral territory for the first time in nearly two years. Likewise, the Spectrem Affluent Investor Confidence Index, measuring the investment confidence of households with $500,000 or more investable assets, advanced three points to minus four, also bringing it back into neutral territory for the first time in two years.

European private equity firm Permira has acquired a financial services firm devoted to retirement preparedness, Just Retirement, for $374 million. This marks Permira’s first financial services investment since setting up a sector team devoted to the industry last year.

NEW YORK - Investors and money managers looking to diversify their portfolios by getting into commodities and commodity exchange-traded funds should keep in mind the volatile nature of these products, as well as the wide range of possible risks, experts say.

Two college-savings companies are borrowing a page from the consumer cash-back loyalty playbook, offering customers rebates on services including refinancing mortgages or opening online bank accounts. Futuretrust, a unit of Destination Maternity Corp., and Upromise Investments have partnered with a series of other financial services companies to offer rebates that can be swept into section 529 college-savings plans.

The financial services industry has been pulling in solid profits lately, but experts say firms should be mindful about how they dole out year-end bonuses and to keep the focus on rewarding long-term performance.

The use of wiretaps and recordings of conversations to help underpin the insider trading case against the Galleon Group hedge fund struck legal experts as unusual, for an investigation involving the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Invesco and Eaton Vance last week launched an exchange-traded fund and an actively managed bond fund, respectively, designed to track the performance of taxable Build America Bonds-a potentially transformative product that has helped galvanize public finance in 2009.

Most financial advisers are preparing to add more financial planning services to their practices as a result of the recent recession, according to a report on practice management by Cerulli Associates.

ALPS Advisors has launched the ALPS/GNI Long-Short Fund, in conjunction with GNI Capital.