Money Management Executive Latest News

The Securities and Exchange Commission has hired Kristin J. Kaepplein as its new director of the Office of Investor Education and Advocacy, effective Aug. 6. Kaepplein comes to the SEC from Goldman Sachs, where she was vice president for global compliance operations. Before that, she was a management consultat at PricewaterhouseCoopers and TIAA-CREF.

As Waddell & Reed celebrates its 70th year, it held a press conference in New York Thursday to give its perspective on its standing.

Barclays Global Investors, by far the dominant player in the exchange-traded fund market, has been offering a variation on the popular theme for the past two years, eight exchange-traded notes, and now Merrill Lynch plans to join the nascent market, Registered Rep reports.

Morningstar posted second-quarter profits of $18.3 million, or 38 cents a share, up 63% from $11.2 million, or 24 cents a share, from the second quarter of 2006. That beat Wall Street estimates of 35 cents a share, Reuters reports.

Fiserv announced Thursday it is acquiring CheckFree for $4.4 billion in cash. The all-cash deal expands Fiserv’s customer base among large financial institutions.

Greenwich Advisors has launched the Greenwich Advisors India Select Fund. Focused on long-term capital appreciation, the fund aims to take advantage of growth opportunities stemming from India’s economic expansion.

First American Funds has launched three large-cap funds that take a macroeconomic approach, looking at how stocks in their underlying indexes would perform in various economic and market conditions. The funds then apply quantitative statistical and computer-driven portfolio models, as well as rules to constrain risk. The goal is to outperform the benchmarks and limit risk.

Asked what they would do with an extra $100,000 to invest in their business, 62% of broker/dealers would invest it in automation and integration, SEI found in a survey of 25 B/Ds who attended an SEI conference on business strategies.

Eighty percent of investors in 401(k) plans say they don’t know how much they are paying in fees, AARP found in a survey. And half said they didn’t know how the investment, administrative and individual fees would impact their savings.

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed two bills that would prevent lawsuits against mutual and pension funds that divest holdings in companies that are doing business in Darfur and Iran.