Portfolio

American Funds will lay off an additional 500 people this year, on top of the 500 who lost their jobs in January. That will leave the 80-year-old firm with a workforce of about 8,500.

Instead of praising investors for making the “Smart Move” by moving to Fidelity, the firm’s new advertising campaign calls them into action by urging them to “Turn Here.”

Long live the 401(k) match. Seventy-four percent of plan sponsors who had a 401(k) match in place are still honoring that promise, according to the American Benefits Council. And 15% have either increased the match or are considering doing so.

Samuel Israel, Bayou Group

Citi has created the first web-based platform to handle all of the various types of investment products inclued in a unified managed household account, with TIAA-CREF coming on board the first asset manager to sign on. TIAA-CREF will be using the platform, OpenWealth, in its fee-based wealth management division.

OppenheimerFunds has launched a new educational campaign, including personalized communications, to allay 401(k) investors’, plan sponsors’ and financial advisers’ concerns about market volatility. Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab, likewise, are conducting seminars and ad campaigns to walk investors through the merits of sticking with the markets and revisiting risk tolerance.

Janus is merging its mutual fund units catering to advisor-sold and retail direct, a move many see as wise as more investors turn to advice-driven channels.

In what would be a tremendous upset in the mutual fund industry, Barclays is shopping its iShares exchange-traded fund unit.

Power Financial experienced its first quarterly loss in 15 years, losing $773 million, or $1.12 a share, compared with profits of $532 million, or 73 cents a share, in the fourth quarter of 2007.

JPMorgan Funds was the best-selling mutual fund family in 2008, taking in $140 billion, Financial Times reports. Nearly all of that money was in money market funds, for excluding those flows, JPMorgan was hit with $1.3 billion in outflows for the 12 months through February.