Portfolio

A number of Build America Bond issuers are seeking voluntary closing agreements with the Internal Revenue Service to settle accidental violations of a de minimis premium rule, an IRS official told industry officials in Manhattan yesterday.

Temenos said late Monday that it will acquire Odyssey Financial Technologies, a supplier of front- and middle-office software for private banking, wealth management and investment management.

The funds, which mark the latest enhancement to the Boston investment manager’s equity products, are designed to provide exposure to the full array of U.S. stocks within the value, core/blend and growth style universes.

Sophis said it established a partnership with a cluster, grid and cloud management software firm, to help investment managers disribute "resource-hungry" calculations such as risk simulations.

Most hedge fund categories saw fund outflows through the first seven months of this year, except corporate action and non-trend funds.

Vanguard Group plans to simplify its Target Retirement Funds and certain other funds-of-funds in an effort to improve the products’ international diversification.

High-balance retirement plan participants aren't showing much loyalty to plan providers when rolling assets into an individual retirement account-yet this could signal room for improvement for 401(k) plans and their advisers.

Assets in exchange-traded funds have nearly tripled in the past five years, from $302 billion at the end of 2005 to $819 billion at the beginning of this month. Year-to-date 2010 through August, investors have pulled $29 billion from traditional US equity mutual funds, while ETFs have seen $40.8 billion in inflows. Since risk aversion is rampant at present, what is driving this tremendous and curious interest in ETFs? Can this momentum continue to catapult ETFs to a second big wave of growth?

Both remained in positive territory for the week ending Sept. 22, according to research firm Lipper FMI.

In its latest global outlook, Barclays Capital said there is little chance for a double-dip recession and the recent economic slowdown is typical four-to-six quarters into a recovery.