Portfolio

It's not every day one encounters a company that's content to be No. 2. But that's exactly the business plan of Principal Retirement & Investor Services. While Principal serves three million investors in 40,000 employer plans, most of those plans are at companies with 1,000 workers or less.

Until now, the low-end separately managed account marketplace has seemed a bit like a Baskin-Robbins shop where you could get everything but vanilla. But if Kevin Carter has his way, the SMA industry could soon be getting a long-awaited 32nd flavor: index funds.

Morningstar has announced plans to create a global hedge fund and private partnership database.

There are many laws that hold parents responsible for the willful misconduct of their children, and now it looks like Marsh & McLennan Cos. (MMC) may have to face the music for its lack of oversight of its Putnam Investments unit.

Barclays Offers First ETFs In a 401(k) Savings Plan

New York State may have changed the way mutual fund companies compete in the 529 college savings plan market.

The downward pressure on 401(k) and other retirement plan balances over the past few years will mean problems for employers - but especially for the millions of workers who are ill-prepared to fund their retirement.

It takes society 30 years to become comfortable with a new technology - be it steel plows, electric lights or video recorders. The device doesn't matter. By that standard, financial advisers are doing pretty well with separately managed accounts.

The 529 college savings plan has yet to catch America's attention the way many providers would have hoped. While it is still early in the product's lifespan, it has struggled with profitability issues, low awareness levels among average investors, and potentially crushing legislative barriers.

AllianceBernstein has rolled out six mutual funds that will be modeled after investment strategies that its private client team uses. Called the Wealth Strategies funds, the family of six funds offer growth, tax-managed growth and various balances between growth and fixed income, with two of the offerings investing in tax-exempt fixed income. AllianceBernstein decided to offer these strategies to retail investors who today, after three years of a bear market, are aware more than ever of the importance of sound portfolio construction, said Michael J. Laughlin, executive vice president of Alliance Capital and chairman of AllianceBernstein Investment Research and Management.