Money Management Executive Latest News

Integrity Mutual Funds, a Minot, Tenn.-based mutual fund and financial services company, has launched a new free cash flow fund, the Integrity Growth & Income Fund.

Vanguard Group's Extended Market Index Fund will change its target benchmark from the existing Dow Jones Wilshire 4500 to the Standard & Poor's Completion Index.

The NASD has reached a settlement with Waddell & Reed over allegations that the Shawnee Mission, Kan.-based money manager profited by illegally switching the variable annuities of more than 5,000 customers.

Assets in the hedge fund industry swelled to $1 trillion in the first quarter, although demand for the high-return, loosely regulated investment vehicles remained at 2004 levels, according to a report released by Hedge Fund Research.

Boston fund giant Fidelity Investments has announced a major restructuring that includes replacing Abigail Johnson, the chairman's daughter, with a committee to run its money management arm. Johnson will become president of Fidelity's Employer Services Company, which provides retirement, benefits and human resources services to companies. Johnson, whose family controls the privately held company, was promoted four years ago to run the money management division and has long been seen as her father's successor. Robert Reynolds, Fidelity's vice chairman and COO, will chair a committee to oversee the company's mutual fund unit in addition to his current responsibilities.

The financial services industry is facing a test, in the form of 78 million retiring Baby Boomers. Every company wants to pass with flying colors, but providing retirement income is a different proposition from planning for retirement. Mutual fund complexes, insurance companies, banks, institutional money managers and broker/dealers all offer competing products and services: individual securities, mutual funds, separately managed accounts, hedge funds, annuities, life insurance, long-term care insurance and banking.

In its study of strategies to reach the retirement market, LIMRA International of Windsor, Conn., interviewed 28 companies, including mutual funds, insurers, banks and distributors, about their own strategies and the competition. Fidelity Investments of Boston was cited as the competitor with the most potent program right now (see sidebar pg. 38). After the Fidelity, the following companies, listed in alphabetical order, were mentioned as having strong strategies.

Just as swiftly as the mutual fund scandal cleaned house among fund advisor C-suites, a new trio of top chiefs have emerged as the triumphant triumvirate.

Nearly two years after the Spitzer probe into mutual funds began, MME thought it wise to ask leading executive and legal minds the begging question: Have the regulators gone into regulation overload and is Spitzer killing capitalism?

Let's just raise a question still unanswered after these past two scandalous years.