Portfolio

The mutual fund industry is eager to hear the outcome of a U.S. Supreme Court case that could determine the fate of the Gartenberg standard, an old legal precedent used to determine whether mutual fund fees are too high that has set a high burden of proof for investors and spared the industry from lawsuits.

Two financial industry leaders are calling on Congress to enact concrete fiduciary standards to help restore investors' trust in Wall Street and the capital markets.

Integrity Mutual Funds has sold its mutual fund division to the employee-owned Corridor Investors and Viking Fund Management.

Money market funds netted $10.71 billion in the week ended March 11, even as the seven-day simple yield fell to a record low of 29 basis points. Assets in money funds now total $3.835 trillion.

For the past two years, activists have implored large fund companies to divest holdings in securities linked to human rights abuses. Now Vanguard has decided to make socially responsible investing screening official.

Fidelity has launched three mutual funds with a long-term focus designed for sale by financial advisers—the Fidelity Advisor Global Balanced, Fidelity Advisor Worldwide and Fidelity Advisor Convertible Securities funds.

Investors in need of cash or traumatized by the Bernard Madoff scandal will continue to redeem hedge fund shares in droves, HedgeWorld News predicts, shrinking the industry by 30% this year to as low as $1 trillion. That was the size of the industry in 2005.

The Investment Company Institute has named Dean R. Sackett III and Donald C. Auerbach as leaders of its government affairs staff.

While they have been testing the social networking waters sporadically for as long as the past two years, fund companies are increasingly turning to social networks to communicate with investors.

Fidelity Investments is treating investors’ unease with the markets as an opportunity to help them revisit their retirement goals, risk tolerance, household budget and preparedness for job loss, by holding 500 seminars around the nation, offering online tools and running ads.