Money Management Executive Latest News

Ameritrade Holding Corp. said Friday that its core online brokerage account base grew last month by 24,000.

Massachusetts regulators Monday filed administrative proceedings against Morgan Stanley for providing its brokers with incentives to sell in-house funds and funds of partner firms. The new suit follows a similar civil suit the state filed against Morgan Stanley last month.

Fidelity Investments was a butt of one of outspoken fund critic Roy Weitz’ jokes in his July commentary. Weitz, who reportedly took offense at Fidelity’s public support of President Bush’s dividend tax cut, posted a phony Fidelity press release on his Web site announcing how Fidelity was now offering class R, for Republican, shares.

Most insurance company CFOs consider distribution to be a key business issue, according to a survey by Tillinghast-Towers Perrin. Out of the 30 respondents, 87% thought distribution of high importance, and nearly a quarter cited it as the top concern.

Fueled by strong inflows into equity funds during the month of June, mutual funds took in a net $47.2 billion, according to Merrill Lynch. Equity funds attracted $18.7 billion, bond funds $5.4 billion and money market funds $23.2 billion

B-shares are beginning to show signs of wear. At least three mutual fund advisors have recently decided to at least temporarily pull the plug on selling B shares. These include JPMorgan of New York, Quaker Funds of Valley Forge, Pa., and Bank of Hawaii of Honolulu, advisor to the Pacific Capital Funds.

Words most associated with Janus Capital Group during the last three years are generally unflattering and are usually along the lines of "downtrodden," "hurting" or "struggling." It's also hard to forget the massive losses suffered by thousands of investors as the burst of the tech bubble devastated a number of the firm's funds.

Mellon Financial Corp. hardly sounds done making acquisitions to expand its private wealth management unit, which includes separately managed accounts.

Struggling to maintain profitability in 529 plans and facing low general public awareness about the products, firms are increasingly adding features and catering to the needs of the high-net-worth client, hoping to snag the bigger fishes in the investment pond.

Amvescap's independent trustees are seeking permission to ask shareholders to approve the merging of the boards of its subsidiaries AIM and Invesco. The trustees, in a registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, say this will be the second step in Amvescap's plan to merge all of its North American fund operations, the first step being AIM becoming the distributor for all of the funds.