Portfolio

401(k) Consultants Focusing on Preservation, Risk Management, Target-Date Funds

As mutual fund assets continue to decline and investors migrate to low-cost products, fund companies are struggling to make management fees stretch even farther.

While most mutual fund companies struggled in 2008, John Hancock Funds finished the year in solid standing, buoyed by a strong first half and careful strategic planning. President and CEO Keith Hartstein recently spoke with Money Management Executive's John Morgan about the key areas that drove Hancock's record $8.5 billion in sales, some regulations he would like to see changed and his outlook for the rest of 2009 and beyond.

By voting in favor of management proposals for large executive pay packages rather than shareholder proposals for pay tied to performance, fund companies are contributing to excessive pay, three groups charge.

Rather than focus on individual fund performance or investors’ malaise in its new advertisements, Fidelity is focusing on providing sound guidance and building on its trusted brand. And that is the focus of the “Guide to Personal Savings” campaign, taglined “Turn Here,” Fidelity Chief Marketing Officer James D. Speros told The Boston Globe.

Hedge funds are singing a new tune when it comes to customer service, the Deseret Morning News reports. After losing 37% of assets in 2008 to poor performance and withdrawals, hedge funds are traveling to see clients, rather than have them meet in their offices.

High-yield bond funds lost an average of 26% in 2008, but the range of the performance was astounding, Andrew “Buddy” Donohue, director of the SEC division of investment management noted in a speech Thursday before the Practising Law Institute—ranging a full 85 percentage points between 7% for the best-performing fund to negative 78% for the worst-performing. And ranges proved to be incredibly wide for all asset classes, with 70% of actively managed funds underperforming their benchmarks in 2008, Donohue noted.

Eaton Vance Distributors has launched the Eaton Vance Tax-Advantaged Bond Strategies Fund, succeeding a similar private investment fund that was formed in 1991.

American Century Investment Management and Waddell & Reed Investment Management Company won "Best Fund Group Overall" honors in the large and small fund company categories, respectively, at the U.S. Lipper Fund Awards 2009 ceremony held Thursday evening in New York.

Investors started moving cash off the sidelines and back into equities, as witnessed by a $22.15 billion drop to $3.834 trillion in total money market mutual fund assets for the week ending April 1, according to the Investment Company Institute.