Money Management Executive Latest News

Mutual fund giant Fidelity Investments is expected to lay off 200 employees this week in an effort to tighten spending, according to The Wall Street Journal.

T. Rowe Price may have achieved the biggest coup yet of U.S. fund companies looking to expand into China, BusinessWeek reports.

Burton Malkiel, the esteemed professor of economics at Princeton University, says the big growth story in the coming years will be China, and within 20 years, its economy with overtake that of the U.S., sister publication On Wall Street reports.

Changes to the Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) program in China will free up some of the country’s $2.25 trillion in household savings to move to overseas markets, the International Herald Tribune reports.

While Advisor Perspectives, a consulting firm that specializes in high-net-worth investors, maintains that Morningstar’s star rating system works broadly well over a three-year period, it’s inconsistent across investment categories, Dow Jones reports.

Not to be outdone by Fidelity and Vanguard, which last month launched income funds of their own specially tailored for retirees, Charles Schwab has launched an income fund intended to compete with annuities, Dow Jones reports.

Bush Administration officials, pension plans and financial service firms joined the Investment Company Institute this week in testifying before Congress on how breaking out the various fees in 401(k) plans separately not only would be costly but would confuse investors.

Institutional and private investors in the two failed Bear Stearns hedge funds have joined forces to press for an inquiry and the replacement of the funds’ directors and general partner with broker/dealer FTI Capital Advisers.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority will hold seminars to help chief compliance officers and broker/dealers, much as the SEC helps CCOs at investment companies through its CCOutreach. The program will be called CCOutreach BD, with the first national meeting tentatively scheduled for March, followed by regional meetings throughout the country.

Market share in the hedge fund industry is increasingly being dominated by the top six players, The Financial Times reports.