Practice

Many companies have moved millions of dollars of obligations for executive benefits into pension plans of regular worker to acquire greater tax breaks and pay for executives’ supplemental compensation and benefits, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Troy A. Paredes was sworn in Friday afternoon as the newest commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission by SEC Chairman Christopher Cox.

The United Services Automobile Association (USAA) has created five new target retirement funds to simplify investing for retirement and to provide investors greater value by offering lower costs that are 47% below the latest similar Lipper category expense ratio average.

The Securities and Exchange Commission issued guidance last week for fund boards of directors in assessing their firm’s soft-dollar practices. The SEC said it was issuing the guidance a full two years after the limitations it put on soft dollars in 2006, restricting it only to research, due to rapidly evolving market and trading practices. True enough, there are wide discrepancies among brokerages today, due to rapidly evolving markets, trading practices and electronic crossing networks. Fund companies have until Oct. 1 to comment on the SEC’s guidance.

America's new mass affluent blend so effortlessly into society that it's often impossible to tell them apart from a traditional middle class family one day, or from an upper class family the next.

WASHINGTON — The Investment Company Institute last Monday urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to expand its proposed credit rating agency rules on structured products to include municipal securities, and to increase the secondary market disclosure requirements for the municipal market.

NEW YORK - A lot of people are wondering when the U.S. will adopt the same international standards for financial reporting that Europe and the rest of the world seem to be moving toward.

Massachusetts sued Merrill Lynch on July 31 on the charges of fraud and “dishonest and unethical” conduct, Reuters reports.

Luis A. Aguilar, a former partner at McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP in Atlanta, was sworn in as a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 31.

U.S. junk bond mutual funds saw net inflows of $153 million in the week ending July 30, according to AMG Data Services.