Portfolio

Vanguard has transferred 34 of its 38 exchange-traded funds to the NYSE Arca from the American Stock Exchange. This is a result of the merger between Amex and NYSE EuroNet, the holding company for NYSE Arca. The other four ETFs, Vanguard® Mega Cap 300 ETF, Vanguard Mega Cap 300 Growth ETF, Vanguard Mega Cap 300 Value ETF and Vanguard Total World Stock ETF, are already traded on the NYSE Arca.

In a report released yesterday on what went wrong at the ratings agencies responsible for grading instruments tied to subprime debt, the Securities and Exchange Commission found a breakdown in communications.

Most individuals are not saving enough for retirement because they are not compensating for rising medical costs, lengthening life spans, and the declining availability of pension and retiree medical benefits, according to a study by Hewitt Associates.

Sir John Templeton, founder of the Templeton Funds and who first came to Wall Street in 1937, passed away yesterday at the age of 95 from pneumonia in Nassau, Bahamas.

Absolute Return magazine reports that only 35 new hedge funds have been launched in the first half of this year, down markedly from 72 funds in the first half of 2007. But this year, those new funds have raised $19.5 billion, up 39% in total assets under management at the outset from the $14 billion the new funds raised last year.

Daniel Petrozzo has been named new chief information officer at Fidelity Investments, and Ronald E. DePoalo is now CIO of the firm’s institutional products division.

Three high-profile staff members at the Investment Company Institute have already left or are planning on leaving the mutual fund lobbying group in the near future, Defined Contributions & Savings Plan Alert reports.

If it isn’t enough that federal regulators are looking into whether the managers of two failed Bear Stearns hedge funds, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, misled investors into staying with the risky investments as they were tanking, they are now probing whether they inflated the funds’ returns and outlook to obtain loans from banks or prime custodians, BusinessWeek reports.

The Alternative Investment Management Association of the U.K. is about to launch a third set of codes for hedge funds-of-funds, on the heels of two other sets of best practices issued in the last 18 months.

Chrisopher Hohn, who runs the $15billion hedge fund The Children’s Investment Fund Management in the U.K.—and who is practically revered for the average annual returns of 42% he has delivered since the fund’s inception in 2004—has reached an impasse, The Wall Street Journal reports.