Practice

The Department of Labor announced Monday that it has pulled its current proposal for the definition of a fiduciary off the table. The agency will take up the issue in early 2012 and re-propose a fiduciary definition after more industry input.

Investors reaching or in retirement are more likely to stay in the stock market if they’re invested in financial products that provide guaranteed income, an online survey of 1,000 Americans shows.

The Association of Divorce Financial Planners on Friday awarded its annual Pioneering Award to Dan Caine and Wendell Smith, the founders of Family Law Software Inc., for developing tools that help advisors work with couples going through a separation.

The Securities and Exchange Commission charged the co-founder of institutional money manager AXA Rosenberg with securities fraud for concealing an error in the computer code that helped the company manage risk for its customers and itself.

Putnam Investments has unveiled a redesigned website that provides advisors with advanced portfolio modeling capabilities, practice-management resources and a social media component for sharing and surveying information on Twitter and Facebook.

Guggenheim Partners and Rydex/SGI announced that Guggenheim will acquire Rydex in the first quarter of 2012 and combine its asset management capabilities under the name Guggenheim Investments. Once the deal is closed, Guggenheim Investments will have $119 billion of assets under management. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

Fidelity Investments racked up defined contribution commitments in the first half of the year totaling 315,000 participants, 269 plans and $17 billion in assets under administration, the company says.

While the recent FPA Convention provided some new and very interesting presentations and introduced some pretty high-brow concepts, Financial Planning columnist Bob Veres felt far too many of the presentations were bogged down by speakers who decided -- or were compelled -- to “dumb down” the material to appeal to the lowest common denominator. What did you think?

The Securities and Exchange Commission is no longer going to be a wholesaler of publicly reported data, according to an assistant chief counsel. There will now be an 'enormous focus' on data on derivatives and other products that until now has not been otherwise available.

Fidelity Investments announced Wednesday it has received commitments for an additional $17 billion in 401(k) assets under management from 269 plans representing 315,000 participants. More than $15 billion of those assets are due to new sales, with the remaining $2 billion the result of mergers and acquisitions by existing clients.