Money Management Executive Latest News

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is stepping into the municipal bond insurance sector and using its name to charge higher premiums than its rivals, according to Financial Times.

Vanguard has bumped American Funds from its six-year run as the biggest-selling fund company in the U.S. , reclaiming the leading role that Vanguard last held in 2001, the Financial Times writes.

Columnist Hugh Anderson, writing in Canada ’s National Post pointed out there is not enough information to put a value on the securities underlying the $35 billion of frozen asset-backed commercial paper clogging up the Canadian money market.

ING Investment Management Americas, the U.S. asset management arm of ING Group NV, bought a minority stake in Lincoln Vale, an alternative asset investment firm based in London and Boston .

The newly-formed FINRA was asked to adjudicate two arbitration complaints against brokerage firm Morgan Keegan and fund manager James C. Kelsoe for two high net worth clients. The actions were filed by the Stoltmann Law Offices.

Assets under management in the mutual fund industry totaled $13 trillion in December, up $1.8 trillion from the same period a year before, according to New York-based Strategic Insight.

U.S. individual investors will continue to chase the high returns in foreign-stock mutual funds in 2008, at the expense of domestic funds, according to the Los Angeles Times.

According to a recent survey of investment managers by the Russell Investment Group in Tacoma , Wash. , three out of four money managers thought of themselves as “bullish” on large-cap domestic growth stocks.

The rapid decline of the dollar may turn out to be so 2006 and 2007, according to some experts. Investors and fund strategists who diversified away from the greenback and into foreign investments were well-rewarded during this period.

They tend to run counter to general economic trends and are shunned by socially responsible funds, but “sin stocks” – or funds that invest in alcohol, tobacco, gambling and the military – have continued to perform exceptionally well, Kiplinger’s reports.