Practice

As the $144.5 billion playing field for target-date, or lifecycle, funds continues to get more and more crowded-last year fund companies introduced 302 target-date funds and assets soared 61%-the funds are diversifying their holdings to distinguish themselves. Others are extending their equity exposure with the goal of equipping longer-living retirees with enough money to last throughout their lifetimes.

The NASD fined two Fidelity Investments broker/dealers-Fidelity Investments Institutional Services Co. and Fidelity Distributors Corp.-$400,000 for distributing misleading performance information about investment plans sold primarily to military personnel.

NEW YORK-Future generations are going to be saddled with tremendous college debt if the financial industry doesn't do a better job of talking to families about the importance of saving for their children's higher education, according to panelists at an AllianceBernstein Investments event here last week, "Perspectives on College Savings."

How many regulators does it take to develop a clear, easy-to-read privacy notice?

WisdomTree Investments, an exchange-traded fund firm started nine months ago, is gearing up to enter the retirement market. The New York firm has assets of $3.2 billion in its 36 ETFs, and it plans to make the funds available to the 401(k) marketplace shortly, said Al Shemtob, its director of retirement services.

The Bush administration pledged last week to improve fee disclosure in 401(k)s. The Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration is now accepting ideas on how to do so from the public and the investment management industry. The deadline for comments is July 24.

NEW YORK-When Alan Greenspan speaks, markets move and people listen. Usually.

A Kentucky lawsuit decided in early 2006, and a similar tax case now being tried in North Carolina, could spell the demise of single-state municipal bond funds as we know them.

NEW YORK-Fund companies can anticipate fewer lawsuits from shareholders over what they claim are excessive fees, according to panelists at the Practising Law Institute's "Investment Management Institute 2007" here.

NEW YORK-Soft dollars stay at the top of the "to do" list for examiners at the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2007, said Gene A. Gohlke, associate director of the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations.