Portfolio

The huge burden of meeting new Internal Revenue Service retirement plan regulations just got a lot easier.

The Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards has raised the ethical standard guidelines for the 55,000 planners in the nation with CFP credentials, in order for investors to get better help in selecting among increasingly complex financial choices.

The Investment Company Institute said last week that mutual fund assets worldwide increased 6.2 percent to $25.82 trillion at the end of the third quarter of 2007. Asset growth was boosted in part by the participation in the data collection of an additional country.

Investors dramatically cut the amount of new money they put into hedge funds, Reuters said.

The F&C Enhanced Alpha UK Equity Fund, one of the first so-called 130/30 funds to focus on UK equities, has reported its sixth consecutive month of beating the market since it was launched in August last year.

Henderson Global Investors, the $123.6 billion investment management company, announced the Feb. 11 reopening of its flagship European Focus Fund to new investors.

Average investors are getting cheated out of thousands of dollars in earnings for their 401(k) plans by hidden fees and expenses, according to Bloomberg.

Specialist fund groups and niche advisers will trump larger asset managers and consultants in the institutional marketplace of the future, according to the Financial Times.

MFS Investment Management has launched a new fund, the MFS Diversified Target Return Fund.

In lockstep with a broadened direction by insurance firms to strip off the complex bells-and-whistles riders and bonuses of the recent past and to issue packaged retirement income solutions-and meet the demands of the new buzzword: decumulation-the other publication I edit, Annuity Market News just relaunched on Friday as Retirement Income Reporter.