Industry

Northern Trust is selling Northern Trust Retirement Consulting to Hewitt Associates. The division provides 200 companies and more than one million participants with defined benefit, defined contribution, recordkeeping and customer service, including health administration services for retirees.

Faced with its weakest quarterly revenue level in over four years and running out of room to cut costs, Charles Schwab said it would look at other ways to increase income and shore up profits.

Wachovia Corp. agreed to acquire the retirement-services recordkeeping and third-party servicing business of PFPC, a member of The PNC Financial Services Group.

Faced with its weakest quarterly revenue level in over four years and running out of room to cut costs, Charles Schwab said it would look at other ways to increase income and shore up profits.

Margin pressures may hasten the pace of consolidation in the fund industry, indicates a report from Lipper of New York, issued last week.

The Bank of New York (BONY) has just signed managed account deals with insurance giant ING Group and a small North Carolina trust company to expand its managed account niche by supplying products to smaller companies and back-office services to larger ones.

If you ignored the fact that this tale involved mutual funds, it would read more like a soap opera.

AMR Corp. of Fort Worth, Texas, the parent company of American Airlines, is considering giving flight to its entire investment management unit, including its proprietary mutual fund unit.

As Wall Street's woes continue, mutual fund executives have come to think of their industry as a drawing on an Etch-A-Sketch. When it gets messed up, they can shake it up and draw it over again.

July