Money Management Executive Latest News

529s have become a hot investment again, after a brief slowdown, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Star mutual fund manager and 17-year Fidelity Investments Canada veteran Alan Radlo left the company this week, The Globe and Mail. Radlo was widely regarded as the face of Fidelity in Canada and oversaw about 25% of the fund company’s $37.5 billion in retails assets under management.

Stable interest rates and low inflation have increased U.S. money managers’ outlook on stocks, according to a quarterly survey by Russell Investment Group, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Deutsche Bank will sell its retail mutual fund business in Italy to Anima SGRpA, a company based in Milan. Anima will merge DWS Investments Italy’s 7 billion Euro, or roughly $9.2 billion, mutual fund assets into its existing products, according to Datamonitor News.

Mutual funds may soon be obsolete, according to Bloomberg columnist Chet Currier. This is despite mutual funds enjoying one of their most successful years, with U.S. assets reaching $10 trillion.

Germany Deputy Finance Minister Thomas Mirow plans to take a closer look at hedge funds to examine whether they pose a “systemic risk,” according to HedgeCo.Net.

Hiking hedge fund investor qualifications probably won’t help anyone, according to Dow Jones Columnist Thomas Kostigen.That’s because even with the present requirements—that investors have at least $1 million in assets, or income s over $200,000 annually—the Securities and Exchange Commission never really checks to see whether investors are really worth what they say.

Fidelity Tuesday added four sector funds to its Advisor Focus line. The new funds, which focus on consumer staples, gold, materials and telecommunications, bring Fidelity’s Advisor sector lineup to 14 and the total number of funds distributed through its advisor channel to 92.The new funds continue the restructuring of Fidelity’s Select Portfolio, VIP and Advisor Focus Fund lineup. So far, the Boston-based company has already changed the names and investment policies of several funds, and adopted various benchmarks.

Wheaton, Ill.-based ETF innovator and PowerShares Chief Executive Bruce Bond argues that traditional indexing is no longer adequate, in an interview with MarketWatch.

WASHINGTON—Charles Schwab knew when it came out with its mutual fund wrap program in July that it would have to do more than simply launch the product if it was to pull in assets, since many competitors had been offering such products for years, according to MME sister publication, American Banker.