Money Management Executive Latest News

Fidelity Investments is closing its $2.1 billion International Small Cap Fund on May 5 to most new investors after assets increased almost threefold since the beginning of 2004, Bloomberg reports.

Nuveen Investments plans to launch a new closed-end exchange-traded fund next month that will invest in call and put options in order to enhance performance and hedge against downside risk. It will be called the Nuveen Equity Premium Advantage Fund..

Privatization of Social Security could be very risky business, considering that personal accounts would put money in the hands of many Americans who are woefully ignorant of the basics of the economic system and common investment vehicles, such as mutual funds, the New York Times reports.

We at Money Management Executive would like to hear back from our readers on how they define market timing within their respective firms. Despite being at the heart of the mutual fund trading scandal and the impetus behind a wave of reform, there remains no industrywide definition as to what constitutes market timing, which remains completely within the law if properly disclosed to shareholders.

Money manager Waddell & Reed reported a decline in first-quarter profits, owing to a rise in compensation, underwriting and distribution costs.Net income for the first quarter dropped to $22.8 million, or 28 cents a share, compared with $27.9 million, or 34 cents a share, a year earlier.

Amvescap, parent company of AIM Investments and former Invesco mutual funds, said on Tuesday that net outflows declined in the first quarter despite a 20% drop in pre-tax profits.Amvescap agreed in September to pay $450 million to settle charges that it allowed improper trading practices in some of its funds. Net outflows for the quarter stood at $2.5 billion, compared with $7.6 billion in the last quarter of 2004.

Investment manager T. Rowe Price reported a 22% increase in first-quarter profit, helped by a rise in investment advisory revenues.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is urging mutual funds to utilize its newly launched volunteer program to report key financial information via Microsoft's eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL), a code that enables documents to be filed on EDGAR in a uniform manner.

MFS Investment Management Chairman Robert Pozen detailed his "progressive indexing" proposal before the Senate Finance Committee in Washington on Tuesday, claiming it could close the long-term deficit dilemma confronting Social Security by more than 70%.

Money management firm Nuveen Investments is reporting record first-quarter earnings, which were helped by a sharp rise in assets under management and investment advisory fees.