Portfolio

For money market fund advisors and investors, help on yields is seen on the way.

Plan sponsors are becoming more aggressive about helping their workers save for retirement, and even investment advice is now offered, Hewitt Associates found in a survey of 300 mid- and large-sized companies.

Value Line, its CEO and former CCO settled civil charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $45 million for having improperly funneled mutual fund trades to its affiliated broker/dealer and pocketing $24 million in commissions.

Of the wirehouse advisers who switched firms, 34% moved to another wirehouse, while 18% went independent. Another 11% of those wirehouse advisers went to a regional firm.

Putnam Chief Executive Officer Robert Reynolds is once again sounding the call for a new approach to 401(k) investing, inclusive of annuities and other retirement income products. This time, he is asking Washington to create a national insurance charter that will ensure consistent regulation for assured income products.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has hired Norm Champ, general counsel to hedge fund Chilton Investment Co., to head up its New York examinations group.

UBS Wealth Management Americas continued to hemorrhage new client assets in the third quarter at almost twice the clip from the previous quarter. Advisers also continued to walk out the door to the point that the company may not be able gain market share from competitors.

With all of the news about low 401(k) balances and half of the people in the country not being offered either a 401(k) or a pension plan, amazingly, an estimated 10% may be saving too much for retirement. That’s according to the estimates of Harvard University economist David Laibson.

Since the market’s low on March 9, small-cap value stocks have delivered some of the best performance, but experts believe the pendulum is swinging back in the direction of large-cap growth stocks, The Wall Street Journal reports.

MassMutual Retirement Services, a unit of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., announced that September was its best sales month ever.