Portfolio

Get a little imagination, guys.

The ongoing credit crisis saga has taken a tremendous toll on hedge funds due to their exposure to structured mortgage-backed assets-and for those heading or parsing trades overseas to avoid U.S. taxes: Beware.

Mutual fund investors held resilient in the second quarter of the year, "shrugging off weakness in the labor and housing markets and even ignoring the rising cost of oil and gas," announced Tom Roseen, senior research analyst for Lipper, during the firm's press conference last Tuesday on the quarter's results.

The growing popularity of fee-based advice is prompting mutual fund companies and other investment platform providers to upgrade the capabilities they offer advisers at banks and elsewhere.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called for a stronger central bank last week, and outlined a proposal that would provide the Fed with more regulatory control over large New York-based financial companies that are not associated with commercial banks, like Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) and the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) are working together to introduce 12 interoperable XML-based message formats to the alternative investment community.

According to a study released by the Investment Company Institute, mutual funds voted overwhelmingly in support for management proposals in 2007, yet a mere 38% of shareholder proposals were backed.

Gerald Tsai, Jr., a legendary financial whiz and performance funds pioneer, died at the age of 79 last Wednesday. In the 1950s and 1960s, Tsai turned a canning company into Primerica, which later became the foundation of Citigroup.

Before Dennis Ferro retires as chief executive officer at Evergreen Investments, Wachovia Corp.'s investment management arm, he says that he wants to expand its alternative investment capabilities and its international distribution.

The Asian Development Bank has launched a new environmentally based mutual fund.The Future Carbon Fund is tied to environmental initiatives from the Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire at the end of 2012.