Money Management Executive Latest News

Canadian insurance titan Sun Life Financial announced plans Thursday to reshuffle its business by separating insurance operations from its principal asset management business ahead of new capital rules from regulators, Reuters reports.

Alliance Capital Management has agreed to sell its AllianceBernstein cash management business to Federated Investors in a deal that is expected to close by the third quarter of 2005, the firms said. According to the deal, AllianceBernstein will transfer $29 billion in assets from its 22 money market funds into 21 of Federated’s money market funds.

Hedge fund Beacon Hill Asset Management and four of its top executives settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission for $4.4 million stemming from fraud charges, the Commission announced.

Securities and Exchange Commission examiners are finding instances of fund managers intentionally mispricing junk bond and small-cap stock mutual fund holdings in their ongoing investigations into the fund industry and may soon take action, Reuters reports.

About 420 days ago, the mutual fund scandal burst into the business sections of newspapers across the country and through the offices of fund firms themselves, taking with it, among others, investors’ confidence, executives’ jobs, and the industry’s formerly clean image.

Affiliated Managers Group has promoted Sean M. Healey, its president and chief operating officer, to president and chief executive officer, effective Jan. 1.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is considering shifting some of its responsibilities to the states as the agency expects a surge of up to 15% in the number of investment advisors it oversees following Tuesday’s passage of hedge fund registration requirements, Dow Jones reports.

After a two-year downturn, mutual fund ownership has risen in the United States. But even as a new survey shows that investors are saving more money, experts warn those savings might not be enough to meet retirement goals.

When an investigator working for New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer found evidence implicating Marsh & McLennan in the insurance bid-rigging scandal last month, the scene at Spitzer’s Manhattan office was one of jubilation, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The announcement this week that Marsh & McLennan Chairman and CEO Jeffrey W. Greenberg had resigned touched off conflicting feelings of relief and sadness for the firm’s mutual fund unit, Putnam Investments, The Boston Globe reports.