Money Management Executive Latest News

With a possible transition from head prosecutor to chief executive of New York State looming, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer seems to be rethinking some of his rhetoric.

Despite a lackluster close to 2005, mutual fund investors should give thanks that November's strong performance led to overall fourth-quarter gains of between 4% and 5%. In 2005, domestic funds gained 7.2%on average.

The Growth Fund of America from American Funds is now the nation's largest mutual fund, as its A shares alone comprise $71.5 billion in assets, according to USA Today.

Mutual funds are making their way back on Wall Street, because hedge funds have not been performing too well lately, and those executives that left their jobs to manage hedge funds are running back to prominent firms, according to The New York Times.

The Securities and Exchange Commission rushed to judgment on the independent chairman rule, failed to research how much the new requirement would cost the industry and relied on new data from multiple sources without seeking the public's input.

The NASD has charged Oppenheimer & Co. and the firm's CEO Albert Lowenthal for intentionally supplying flawed data in response to its request for firms' breakpoint discount practices on sales of Class A shares. Separately, the NASD has also fined the firm $250,000 for failing to report broker misconduct to regulators, brokerages and the public.

Since their creation in 1993, exchange-traded funds reaped their greatest monthly inflows in November, taking in $25.12 billion, according to data from the Investment Company Institute. By last count, they had $288.95 billion in assets.

In another nod to the growing popularity of index funds, Fidelity Investments has launched three new, low-cost Treasury bond index funds, the Boston-based company said late last week.

In the perpetual performance contest between actively managed mutual funds and their lower cost, index fund rivals, the winner for 2006 is1/4both, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

Fidelity Investments--one of the biggest employers in Boston, with 12,800 on its payroll there, a sizeable portion of its 37,000 employees worldwide--plans to move 1,500 jobs out of Bean Town and Marlborough, Mass., to locations around the country.