Portfolio

BlackRock will be eliminating a number of positions among its 5,500 ranks, Bloomberg reports, quoting an internal memo it obtained. It will be the first time in its 20 years of existence that it has eliminated jobs.

The European Union, which has been in favor of new rules and capital requirements for hedge funds and private equity, will propose such regulations next month to the European Commission, Reuters reports.

SalesPage Technologies and Coates Analytics have joined forces to offer mutual fund companies a customer relationship management tool with detailed information on distributors. The offering imports Coates data into a SalesPage portal.

Managers of hedge funds with $1 billion or more in assets under management will, for the most part, see their total compensation rise this year, even as predictions continue that as many as three-quarters of the hedge funds on the market will close their doors and many executives on Wall Street will be getting no bonuses this year at all.

Fred Alger Management has pledged to donate 1% of the management fees it collects on the Alger Green Fund to the non-profit 1% For the Planet group, which will, in turn, pass the money along to environmental organizations around the world.

Stressing that the reorganization is not motivated by the financial crisis but a strong desire to improve accountability and, with that, performance, Putnam Chief Executive Officer Robert Reynolds announced Monday that the firm is doing away with team-managed equity mutual funds. Instead, those funds will be run by single portfolio managers.

Upon laying off 1,300 people last week, Fidelity Investments indicated that another 1,700 will lose their jobs in the first quarter of 2009, bringing the tally of layoffs to 3,000, or 7% of the workforce.

As the Dow Jones Industrial Average hit a 5-1/2-year low, equity mutual funds lost $31.8 billion in the week ended Nov. 12, according to data from Trim Tabs Investment Research.

A year ago, there were about 200 mutual funds that had closed their doors to additional investments, but today, there are only about 40 such funds, according to Morningstar, The Baltimore Sun reports.

A record $156.5 billion was withdrawn from mutual funds in Europe, according to the Lipper FMI report. All asset classes suffered net withdrawals.