Money Management Executive Latest News

Fidelity Investments has named Ren Cheng chief investment officer of its lifecycle and asset allocation funds, Reuters reports. Formerly one of the portfolio managers of Fidelity’s Freedom line of lifecycle funds, Cheng now oversees $130 million in assets and 12 portfolio managers and analysts. Although he previously oversaw the group, he didn’t have the CIO title.

The Save Darfur Coalition is extending its campaign against mutual fund firms that have investments in companies in Sudan to include four more fund firms—American Funds, Franklin Resources, JPMorgan Chase and Vanguard— the Boston Globe reports.

Fidelity Investments will open a research and development facility in Galway, Ireland manned by 49 professionals who will collaborate with a dozen professors at local universities, the Boston Globe reports. They will join the 300 people who already work in Galway and Dublin in fund administration.

Rydex Investments has launched the Rydex International Rotation Fund, a fund that seeks to outperform the MSCI World Ex-U.S. Index.

Despite the market turmoil caused by the subprime crisis, most mutual funds are in the black, although their returns are not as strong as previous years, the Boston Globe reports. In fact, only sector funds that concentrate on banks and real estate are taking a hit.

Investors pulled $32 billion from hedge funds in July, the largest monthly withdrawal since 2000, and experts believe withdrawals could even be higher in August, the Associated Press reports.

A Massachusetts appeals court has denied a $15 million payout to Peter Scannell, the former Putnam Investments call center employee who blew the whistle on mutual fund trading and set off an industrywide scandal.

Speaking before a banking conference, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbruck said that the credit crisis is opening the eyes of American and British regulators to the dangers of hedge funds and the need for regulation, the International Herald Tribune reports.

Ryan Jacob rode the dot-com craze to incredible triple-digit-return highs and then, when the market crashed, lost 90% of investors’ money. Now Morningstar rates the Jacob Internet No. 1 in the technology sector for the past three and five years, Registered Rep reports.

Mutual and hedge funds that use quantitative strategies have fared poorly of late, but rather than blaming their bleak performance on recent market gyrations or a steep and simultaneous sell-off of stocks by hedge funds, many are saying that the resurgence of growth stocks is to blame, The Wall Street Journal reports.