Money Management Executive Latest News

In his 2007 budget proposal, President George Bush is looking to expand tax-free savings opportunities for investors in Coverdell education savings accounts and 529 college savings plans and at the same time permanently increase the amount workers can save in tax-qualified plans.

In the wake of recent regulatory challenges in the mutual fund industry, the very relationship between fund companies and their transfer agents has begun to change. Transfer agents today have expanded their role to reflect the growing need in the industry for thought leadership and consultative servicing. While technology and shareholder servicing remain at the cornerstone of the transfer agency offering, fund companies should expect this added value from their transfer agents to complement their focus on regulatory requirements and changing markets.

The NASD's Investor Education Foundation is launching a $6.8 million campaign to supply members of the military with education and tools about investing, as a way of warding off unscrupulous investment firms that have been selling overpriced, risky and inappropriate products to members of the armed forces.

Two leading think tanks, the Heritage Foundation and the Retirement Security Project, have proposed payroll-funded IRAs as a way of meeting the retirement needs of the 71 million American workers who don't have the option of investing in a 401(k) plan. That's nearly half of the 153 million workers in America.

Fidelity's flagship Magellan fund, long known for investing in high-profile, large-cap American stocks, has moved 20% of its $51 billion under management to stocks overseas, up from only 4% of its assets in non-U.S. stocks as of the end of last year, Financial Times reports.

After two years of development, Brinker Capital has launched a unified managed account combines managed accounts, mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and alternative investments on a single platform through a choice of 20 different strategies that Brinker is offering.

Fidelity Investments announced Thursday that assets and the number of its Advisor 401(k) plans, designed for small- and mid-sized employers, increased in 2005. Assets increased 16% over the year before, to $13.5 billion, while the number of new plans Fidelity signed up rose 44%, to 380, bringing the total number of plans using Fidelity's Advisor 401(k) services to 2,176.

Just as the spotlight was taken off of the debacled Refco, it now appears there is talk about whether the brokerage firm's largest remaining unit should be shut down, according The Wall Street Journal.

Ameriprise Financial's largest mutual fund, the $8.5 billion RiverSource New Dimensions Fund, suffered withdrawals of $5.9 billion last year, and so the firm has decided to merge the fund with a smaller and younger fund, the RiverSource Large-Cap Equity Fund, to end withdrawals and improve performance, according to St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Because many individuals have had trouble accessing their 401(k) assets upon leaving their employer, the U.S. Department of Labor has decided to step in. The employee advocate is about to propose new rules that could make this process much easier and at the same time much quicker, according to The Wall Street Journal.