Money Management Executive Latest News

When like-named target-date funds experienced a wide range of investment returns in 2008, regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Labor took notice.

Assets in money market funds fell $21.35 billion to $3.559 trillion in the week ended Aug. 26, the Investment Company Institute said.

When Fidelity recently announced that its assets under management grew 9% since the end of 2008 to $1.4 trillion and that its market share, already formidable at 11.7%, has now topped 12.4%, pundits scoffed that it was Fidelity's money market funds that drove this growth.

The mutual fund industry is known for churning out “hot-dot” funds that follow the latest investment craze, but as The Wall Street Journal notes in a recent column, it’s hard to believe but there are fewer than 10 small-cap emerging markets funds available.

In light of recent high-profile hedge fund fraud cases, Bernard Madoff notwithstanding, hedge fund investors are much more careful about transparency than they are performance when selecting a fund, according to Standard & Poor’s.

Harris Associates, the Investment Company Institute, the Mutual Fund Directors Forum and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce fired their first salvos in the Supreme Court fee case through separate briefs, claiming that market forces and diligent fund trustees keep fees low and negotiated at “arm’s length” bargaining between the investment advisor and the board. They also argue that due to the greater service afforded to retail investors, institutional fees are understandably lower.

OppenheimerFunds has hired William C. Carey as head of distribution and Martha B. Willis as chief marketing officer, to help the firm respond to a rapidly changing industry and to streamline marketing and distribution functions across the firm’s various business lines and out to clients.

Katherine “Kit” Addleman, regional director of the Atlanta office of the Securities and Exchange Commission, will leave the SEC after 20 years of service in late October to become a partner with Haynes and Boone.

Deutsche Bank’s DWS Investments fund unit is planning to offer the DWS Variable NAV Money Fund, a money market fund with a floating net asset value. It will require a minimum $1 million investment.

Many investors are still too afraid to get back into the stock market, and their hesitancy is putting a drag on the market’s resurgence, the Chicago Tribune reports.