Portfolio

Charles Schwab Corp. has partnered with Pacific Investment Management Co. to offer wealthy clients in or approaching retirement a managed municipal bond laddering product.

But the direct-pay subsidy rate would shrink from the current 35% of interest costs to 33% in 2011, 31% in 2012 and 30% in 2013, under a draft of a second jobs bill unveiled yesterday by House Ways and Means Committee chairman Sander Levin, D-Mich.

More retirement think tanks are getting on board with the idea of including annuities in 401(k) plans, but so far, only a handful of large employers have this as an option.

The SPARK Institute has released the “Universal Small Employer Retirement Savings Program” report, in which it explains how universal plans would be less expensive and easier than automatic IRAs.

Vanguard Group plans to spend more on advertising this year as it increases its spending on targeted marketing online.

In an effort to sell more products through financial advisers, Fidelity Investments announced Monday that it plans to reorganize hundreds of its employees.

More than half of ads will run online.

Fidelity Institutional has formed a new centralized client experience organization to improve service for registered investment advisors, broker/dealers, traders and family offices.

Proposed legislation by the Securities and Exchange Commission to have single family offices register as investment advisors is part of the financial regulatory reform negotiations currently being debated in the Senate.

Proposed new hedge fund rules in Europe would limit access to the market for fund managers and custodian banks outside the EU, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has argued. Nonetheless, the European Commission is pressing ahead with the new rules.