Money Management Executive Latest News

Driven by the desire to further grow their wealth, investors with portfolios of $1 million or more are increasingly turning to alternative asset classes, including private equity, hedge funds and real estate, a survey of high-net-worth investors by Northern Trust of Chicago reveals.

The Department of Justice is going to follow up on a civil lawsuit against Mario Gabelli, accusing him of creating bogus minority-owned and small-business companies to qualify for millions of dollars worth of discounted FCC licenses for cellphones and other communications devices, only to turn around and sell those licenses for a $206 million profit.

In 2005, 222 mutual funds were merged into others, a 66% increase in fund mergers from the year before, The Wall Street Journal reports. And with merger and acquisitions activity increasing among investment management firms, experts expect the trend to continue in 2006.

Mutual funds did not do so well in February. However, due to their impressive performance in January, mutual funds have notable year-to-date result, according to Business Week Online.

Not only has the U.S. Chamber of Commerce taken the Security and Exchange Commission to court over mutual fund governance, the business advocacy group is now publicly criticizing the Commission's actions towards companies as too harsh, the Associated Press reports.

TIAA-CREF has promoted chief investment officer Scott C. Evans to executive vice president of a newly created asset management unit and chief executive officer of the New York company's Teachers Advisors Inc. and TIAA-CREF Investment Management.

Randall Fons, the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Denver regional office, will step down from his position later this month to become a partner with Morrison & Foerster. Fons has been head of the SEC's central regional office since 2000, in charge of enforcement and examination programs in Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico.

Even as Baby Boomers focus on preparing for retirement, many are overlooking debt, The Wall Street Journal reports. In fact, Americans' debt is growing as fast as their wealth. For instance, while housing values increased 71% over the past five years, mortgage debt increased 75%. And over the past five years, consumer debt has increased 27%.

Mutual fund portfolio managers might want to think twice before investing in shares of NYSE Group, which began trading Wednesday, MarketWatch reports. The Securities and Exchange Commission might require funds that own 5% or more of the stock to get its approval before sending trades to the Big Board.

A number of fund companies are offering specialized emerging-markets funds that focus on Brazil, Russia, India and China, or "BRICs," following a Goldman Sachs report predicting the economies of these nations will produce the fastest growth in the world in the coming 40 to 50 years, The Wall Street Journal reports. In fact, Goldman projects that by 2050, only the economies of the U.S. and Japan will be greater than the four BRICs combined.