Money Management Executive Latest News

Bank of America Corp. employees will have to sign a revised code of ethics document as a result of regulators’ probe of improper trading at its mutual fund unit.

With a return of 0.29% in March, hedge funds have yielded a 3.35% year-to-date return, according to the Hennessee Hedge Fund Index. Despite a drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Nasdaq and S&P 500, hedge funds still climbed slightly upward.

Real estate funds tumbled 8.33% last week according to Moody’s Investors Service, as investors took cash out of the sector on fears of rising interest rates.

Money market fund assets tacked on $15.27 billion in the week ended April 7, according to industry trade association the Investment Company Institute. That brings their total number of assets up to $2.039 trillion.

T. Rowe Price, the seventh largest U.S. mutual fund company, offered a disappointing first-quarter profit forecast on Thursday, despite projecting an 80% improvement from a year ago. As a result, the company saw its shares drop $1.05, or 1.92%, to $53.52 on Nasdaq.

Royal Bank of Canada has quietly started a U.S. prime brokerage operation in New York to tap into the growing market for hedge fund services. The Toronto company, which calls itself RBC Financial Group, plans to formally unveil the new unit, RBC Hedge Fund Services, as early as this week. It offers settlement, clearing, custody, financing, and reporting services to hedge funds.

EnvestnetPMC has put out an undisclosed bid to acquire Net Asset Management, another Web-based, turnkey provider of separately managed accounts, mutual funds and alternative investments to broker/dealers and independent registered investment advisers. The deal would create the largest independent platform for fee-based advisers in a segment that began consolidating about 18 months ago but has much further to go, an analyst said.

The indictment of former Bank of America broker Theodore C. Sihpol, III last week should sound the alarm for fund executives that those criminally charged in the scandal could spend years locked up with murderers and rapists.

In an effort to break the stifling full-court press being applied by their critics, two tainted mutual fund shops recently launched expansive advertising campaigns stressing their commitment to achieving solid long-term performance for investors.

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