Portfolio

Covered bonds — dual recourse bonds that are popular in Europe but have seen little domestic issuance — may yet take hold in the U.S., according to a PIMCO report.

New York-based Water Island Capital is reopening its $2.95 billion Arbitrage Fund, which has been closed to new investors since July 19, 2010, on March 15, according to a Securities & Exchange Commission filing.

Thanks to stagnant interest rates and lingering worries over the Eurozone and other developed markets, the exchange traded fund market in February grew 3.9%, or more than $44 billion assets, over the previous month, according to a snapshot report released by State Street Global Advisors.

The exchange-traded product market reached $1.72 trillion of assets at the end of February, up 12.8% year to date, according to the ETF Landscape report issued by the BlackRock Investment Institute.

Charles Schwab Investment Management, Inc. has filed paperwork with the Securities & Exchange Commission to launch active exchange-traded funds, which are getting a lot of buzz courtesy of PIMCO’s latest offering and iShares’ proposed fund.

Nuveen Fund Advisors and GuideStone Funds garnered the top group honors at the 2012 U.S. Lipper Fund Awards last night.

Symetra Investment Services has hired a new director of business development away from Lincoln Financial Network, the retail sales and financial planning affiliates of Lincoln Financial Group.

Investors are much savvier about retirement planning than commonly thought, at least when it comes to target-date funds, according to a research note from investment management company Vanguard.

On the heels of Bill Gross’ latest active exchange-traded fund, BlackRock has thrown its hat into the active ETF space with a proposed offering of its own.

Exchange-traded fund sponsor WisdomTree has launched a corporate bond ETF covering emerging market issuers across Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East.