Practice

As directors and officers of failed banks brace for FDIC lawsuits, an intense legal battle is developing over accessing files at their former institutions.

With wealthy under-50 investors making up 29% of total affluent investors in the United States – and growing - the big question for wealth management firms is how to gain more wallet-share from this critical client segment.

The Bank of America unit Trust has appointed five new advisors in Illinois and Texas to focus on ultra-high net worth clients.

HighTower has expanded its New York team by merging with the business of Steve Bogner, a former Morgan Stanley Smith Barney advisor who manages $80 million in client assets.

In 2008, Oxford University Press published the first history of mutual funds, THE RISE OF MUTUAL FUNDS: AN INSIDER’S VIEW, by Matthew P. Fink, former president of the Investment Company Institute. Oxford has just published a new paperback edition, updated to cover the 2008 financial crisis and its impact on mutual funds. The following is the Preface to the new edition.

Fidelity announced Monday that the lifetime income variable annuity that it offers through MetLife, the MetLife Growth and Guaranteed Income annuity, has attracted more than $1 billion in sales since it was first offered a year ago.

Older Americans are worried about numerous factors affecting their financial security and, thus, are very skeptical of financial planners who say they are building portfolios for them to mitigate risk, research by Hearts & Wallets found through nine focus groups across the country.

From a psychic who couldn’t see the future to the car czar caught up in a pay-to-play hustle, this was the year in deception.

For the past two years, the FDIC has maintained a consistent crisis-response posture. But it will undoubtedly need to pivot in a new direction in 2011.

The Securities and Exchange Commission late Thursday obtained an emergency court order to freeze the assets of SJK Investment Management in Greensboro, N.C.