Money Management Executive Latest News

Piper Jaffray said in a filing this week that the National Association of Securities Dealers has told the firm to expect disciplinary action for directed-brokerage arrangements it entered into with several fund firms, the Associated Press reports.

The mutual fund industry may have overstated its ability to deter market timers because compliance officers and securities regulators lack the ability to control individual investors’ personal brokerage accounts, Reuters reports.

Despite analysts’ bullish predictions that the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index on track to post earnings of 27% in the second quarter, many stock market investors during the past month expressed their skepticism through widespread selling, BusinessWeek reports.

Global Investment Systems has broken with Extended Systems, its longstanding database provider, and utilized Oracle’s database platform to power its latest shareholder accounting system, which is formally known as MFACT.

Buy recommendations from independent research firms with no investment banking business carry more weight than the same recommendations from investment banks, a new study shows. In fact, the three college professors who conducted the study found that between 1996 and the middle of 2003, the performance of the stock recommendations by independent research firms topped the banks’ recommendations by 8%.

An overwhelming majority of big-ticket retirement plans are moving against market timing, and the ones who have not moved are preparing to do so, according to a survey by the Committee on Investment of Employee Benefit Assets, a division of the Association for Financial Professionals.

San Francisco-based Union Bank of California officially bought CNA Financial Corporation’s retirement plan trust and recordkeeping businesses, the companies announced, although terms were not immediately disclosed. The deal was first announced on May 17, but was just now completed.

The sale of Safeco’s life insurance unit to investors, including Berkshire Hathaway and the White Mountains Insurance Group, closed at the end of July for $1.5 billion. The new owners have renamed the unit Symetra Financial, according to a report in The Seattle Times.

Georgeson Shareholder, a New York-based mutual fund proxy and shareholder communication specialist, has acquired the shareholder mailing firm Alamo Direct Mail in a $15.5 million deal.

Diversified Management Resources, a Boston-based financial services executive recruitment and consulting firm, has added Robert Goldberg, the former president of the National Investment Company Services Association, as a consultant.