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Managers should not benchmark the performance of their growth and value portfolios to the Standard & Poor's or Barra growth and value indexes, a recent study in the Journal of Investment Consulting maintains. The reason? The benchmarks are flawed.

In rapid succession, several market-timing mutual fund cases have come and gone since Gary Pilgrim and Harold Baxter and the Wayne Pa.-based firm that bears their name, Pilgrim Baxter & Associates, were charged with fraud and skirting fiduciary responsibilities by regulators in mid-November, yet the case is still unresolved.

The SEC charged Gary Pilgrim and Harold Baxter, as well as Pilgrim Baxter & Associates, with "fraud and breach of fiduciary duty" in connection with a market-timing scheme at the PBHG funds, back in mid-November. Pilgrim, then-president, investment chief, and director of Pilgrim Baxter, as well as the president of the PBHG funds, and Harold Baxter, CEO and chairman of the firm and chairman and trustee of the PBHG funds, resigned the day of the charges.

For Ben Franklin, nothing was certain but death and taxes. While those certainties remain, parents of college-bound teenagers now face another sure thing: the staggering and ever-increasing cost of paying for higher education.

PNC Financial Services Group Inc. said Friday it would create a new investment advisor called Veritable, LP, comprised of PNC Advisors executives. To start it up, the $6 billion consulting arm of PNC's Hawthorn unit will be sold to Veritable, which will be privately held.

The editors of Money Management Executive want to know how Fundgate has affected your sales environment, customer service approach and communications at your firm.

Just four days after settling with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and the Securities and Exchange Commission on charges of improper trading, FleetBoston mutual fund arm Columbia Management Group said Friday that three of its top executives "will not be returning" to the office, Reuters reports.

Fidelity’s call for trading cost itemization and subsequent pan on soft dollars could hit small firms hard, experts tell Reuters. And a smaller playing field could make the industry less competitive, they say.

Stable-value products, generally used by investors who cannot tolerate market losses, continued to garner attention at MetLife last year, despite an upswing in the stock market. The company grew its stable value assets by $1.5 billion dollars in 2003, with assets totaling nearly $19 billion.

The deal to sell Safeco Corp.’s life insurance unit to a group of investors led by Berkshire Hathaway and White Mountains Insurance Group would bring a new player into the bank-annuity marketplace but probably does not foreshadow major changes.