Portfolio

Nelson Roberts Investment Advisors this week closed its first RIA acquisition, picking up San Francisco Bay Area-based Sylvan H. Kline Jr. Inc. to bring its total assets under management to more than $275 million.

Motivating staff and building relationships lead to success

Tax-exempt money market funds saw only moderate outflows as investors yanked a mere $252.5 million in the week ended April 4, causing total net assets to dip slightly to $319.05 billion, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

Genworth Financial Wealth Management has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to offer six asset allocation funds that will be sub-advised by Franklin Templeton, Loomis Sayles and State Street Global Advisors.

The Hartford found in a recent survey that 37% of Americans age 45 and older with incomes below $50,000 worry more about rising taxes than those with higher incomes, but are less likely to participate in a 401(k) or other retirement plan that could reduce their taxes. By comparison, 28.5% of those earning $50,000 to $100,000 have such worries, and 32% of those earning more than $100,00 are worried about taxes.

The Conference Board Measure of CEO Confidence rose to 67 in the first quarter, up from 62 in the fourth quarter—showing a measurable amount of faith in the economy since a reading above 50 indicates a positive outlook.

Sub-advised fund assets topped $1.7 trillion in 2010, an all-time high, Financial Research Corp. said.

State Street Global Advisors has launched a new exchange-traded fund based on a corporate bond index weighted according to three quantitative measures: return on assets, interest coverage and current ratio.

Companies paid out $19 billion in dividends in the first quarter of 2011, Standard & Poor’s said. And the number of companies increasing dividends rose 27.8% to 510, up from 399 in the first quarter of 2010.