Portfolio

Norwood, Mass.-based W.E.Donoghue & Co., Inc. has struck up a distribution deal with Mutual of Omaha’s Retirement Plans Division to distribute its Power Income Fund to retirement plan participants.

Federated Investors, Inc. is acquiring $5 billion of money market assets from four Fifth Third money market funds and merging them into four existing Federated money market funds.

“I am very excited about this transaction. In addition to increasing our assets under management, it gives us some new and interesting fund offerings, and access to a premier distribution system,” says Steven M. Graziano, president of Touchstone.

Just five months after agreeing to buy Old Mutual Asset Management’s funds from the firm’s U.S. mutual fund business, Cincinnati, Ohio-based Touchstone Advisors today revealed that it is acquiring the assets of 16 mutual funds from Fifth Third Bancorp.

Natixis Global Asset Management has launched an international hedged equity fund to bet on international equity.

The Exchange Traded Products industry recorded its best ever start to a year, attracting net new assets of $67.3 billion in the first quarter of 2012, a 57% increase over the $42.8 billion gained in the first quarter of 2011, according to the Q1 2012 ETP Landscape Report released by BlackRock.

There were 7,693 mutual funds at the end of February 2012, according data from the Investment Company Institute.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average tumbled 124.80 points to end at 13,074.75 Wednesday as investors weighed the implications of the Fed’s latest policy meeting and cast a wary eye toward Europe.

The Exchange Traded Products (ETP) industry recorded its best ever start to a year, attracting net new assets of $67.3billion in the first quarter of 2012, a 57% increase over the $42.8billion gained in the first quarter of 2011, according to the Q1 2012 ETP Landscape Report released by BlackRock. The first quarter 2011 figure had previously been the best annual start on record.

Investors continue to spurn mutual funds that invest long-term in U.S. stocks, according to the latest statistics from the Investment Company Institute. For the week ended March 28, investors pulled $3.53 billion from domestic stock funds, the largest weekly outflow so far this year.