Portfolio

PHILADELPHIA - Boards may have grown in power since the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, but mutual fund companies should take care to temper that influence so it doesn't interfere with business.

The information technology sector has surpassed financials as the largest sector in the S&P 500 index for the first time since early 2002, Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst for Standard & Poor’s, told BusinessWeek.com.

Nuveen Investments Inc. is developing a debt instrument to allow the refinancing of billions of dollars in frozen auction-rate securities.

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted unanimously yesterday on a proposal that would require mutual funds to provide risk/return, fee and strategy information using the same new digital data tagging system as the 500 largest U.S. corporations.

Fidelity Ventures is backing several new Internet start-ups in hopes of competing with online giant eBay, The Boston Globe reports.

Morgan Stanley has been shuffling executives and its sales strategy for its Van Kampen mutual fund unit, The Wall Street Journal reports this morning. The funds are part of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, which has $600 billion in assets and accounted for 40% of the firm’s income before taxes in 2007. Approximately one-third of that income is generated by the fund division, a third of which is sold to retail investors. The rest is primarily institutionally and foreign-sold.

WisdomTree Investments Inc. said Tuesday that it had introduced an actively managed, exchange-traded fund.

The move to XBRL filings will roll out in stages, with about 500 so-called "large" domestic and foreign issuers expected to submit XBRL versions of financial reports this winter. This is according to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which last week issued a rule proposal concerning XBRL adoption.

WASHINGTON — Market participants hailed yesterday’s long-awaited but widely expected Supreme Court decision that upheld 42 states’ preferential tax treatment of their bonds as a “resounding victory” for the municipal securities market.

The nearly $80 billion that was pulled from money market funds in April was the highest monthly total in 16 years.