Money Management Executive Latest News

WASHINGTON - Perhaps the mutual fund industry could borrow a page or two from the playbook of Gordon M. Bethune.

WASHINGTON-Electronic communication, the way of life and doing business that it has become, demands greater vigilance on the part of mutual fund IT and legal experts.

IXIS Asset Management Advisors has created a new division called Managed Portfolio Advisors. The new unit is designed to help financial institutions develop investment products, construct portfolios and provide overlay management.

David Winters has left Franklin Mutual Advisers to start his own firm, Wintergreen Advisers. Winters managed four funds, co-managed one fund and oversaw three other retail products for the firm, a part of Franklin Templeton Investments since 1996, MarketWatch reports.

Both conventional wisdom and earlier studies of mutual fund performance found that removing closed funds from performance databases raised the overall performance of the industry. However, a new study from Lipper demonstrates that this effect is much less profound than thought, and is primarily concentrated in certain investment styles, Reuters reports.

Latest testimony in Theodore Sihpol III's trial has revealed his motive for assisting in late trading: cold, hard cash. The former Bank of America broker received commissions for the trades well into the six-figures, Bloomberg reports.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. cleared over $1 quadrillion in assets for the first time in 2004, topping its 2003 volume of $923 trillion by 22%.

WASHINGTON--The ICI decided, at this year's annual convention, to "roll the videotape" and show the industry's leading executives just what their end investors have to say.

Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (MLIM) has expanded its variable insurance funds business and is rebranding them under Mercury Advisors, MLIM's non-proprietary brand.

The change in Hong Kong regulation to allow sales of some hedge funds to retail investors, a reform that is also under consideration at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, is about to face even more relaxation, as securities regulators there are preparing to approve an even wider use of this increasingly popular investment vehicles, The Wall Street Journal reports. Since this $1 trillion industry's launch, generally attributed to the late 1940s, hedge funds have been historically designed as investment pools for high-net-worth individuals and various institutions. This was until regulators in Hong Kong and Singapore started approving hedge funds for common folks. As of today, Hong Kong has approved 13 hedge funds for retail investors, while Singapore has given the green light to four. By type, about a half them are the Funds of Funds.