Money Management Executive Latest News

The National Association of Securities Dealers collected roughly half the amount of fines in 2006 compared to 2005, according to the Associated Press.

The Save Darfur Coalition has been expanding its campaign to prompt mutual funds, pension plans and endowments to divest holdings in Sudan, the Associated Press reports. And while it’s been having some success, primarily with pension plans, not all of the asset managers with stakes in companies in the area are willing to sell out.

Investors increasingly seek the set-and-forget index fund with a twist: tweaked market capitalization, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Mergers and acquisitions among Asian financial services firms will increase over the next five years, in spite of high valuations, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey, Dow Jones reports.

China agreed to further open its markets to American products and services, including mutual fund and other financial services firms, Agence France-Presse reports.

Whereas individual investors and even hedge funds have typically been passive in Europe, they are increasingly speaking up, The New York Times reports.

With the release of Alpha magazine’s list of the salaries of hedge fund managers in 2006—the top manager, James Simons, earning $1.7 billion—the question arises: Are these guys worth it, The New York Times reports. Simons’ salary is roughly the same amount the U.S. government spent maintaining the nation’s national parks.

Joe Mansueto, chairman of Morningstar, has even bigger plans for his company: to deliver a "seamless, integrated solution" like Microsoft Office, the Chicago Sun Times reports.

MFS Investment Management, which had been on the market until last October, is no longer looking for a buyer, the firm’s chairman, Robert Pozen, tells Bloomberg.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Wednesday that BISYS is paying $25 million in disgorgement and interest to settle charges of violating financial reporting, books and records and internal control provisions of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.