Money Management Executive Latest News

Wachovia Corp. agreed to acquire the retirement-services recordkeeping and third-party servicing business of PFPC, a member of The PNC Financial Services Group.

ETF Advisors, which exchange traded fund authority Gary Gastineau launched less than six months ago with four Treasury fixed-income exchange traded funds, will liquidate the funds May 27 and close its doors.

Dan Geraci is leaving his position as president and CEO of Pioneer Investment Management to become president and CEO of Phoenix Investment Partners, a subsidiary of The Phoenix Companies with $54 billion under management. Geraci is leaving Pioneer after only 18 months. Prior to joining Pioneer, a division of UniCredito Italiano that manages $112 billion worldwide, Geraci was president of Fidelity Private Wealth Management.

Pershing and Merrill Lynch last week announced that Pershing will make Merrill's family of 70 mutual funds available on its supermarket, reaching 4.7 million investors through 850 broker/dealers.

After a five-year slump that lasted through last October, junk bonds have been on a tear over the past six months. "Technically, people would say after such a long run, there is bound to be a pullback," said Erika Safran, a financial planner with Financial Asset Management Corp. "But there are few other investment vehicles out there that provide this kind of yield right now. Over the long term, people are not buying equities," she said. One of the biggest draws to high-yield bonds is their spread over treasuries. While the average yield on junk bonds has fallen since the beginning of the year, it's still high. With the 10-year Treasury yielding about 4%, junk bonds can pay as much as 11%.

Determining the best separate account manager in a particular asset class can be a daunting task for brokers, financial intermediaries, consultants, investors and even other separate account managers who want to check their progress against the competition.

Faced with its weakest quarterly revenue level in over four years and running out of room to cut costs, Charles Schwab said it would look at other ways to increase income and shore up profits.

While fund companies have resisted firing portfolio managers and top executives and have, in fact, rewarded them as well as their directors with equal if not slightly higher salaries (see MFMN 4/14/03), the bear market is beginning to catch up with some.

Funds that trade the most, whose brokerage costs take a big bite out of returns, are performing even worse than funds that trade the least, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing figures from research firm Morningstar.

Northern Trust announced yesterday it is selling Northern Trust Retirement Consulting to Hewitt Associates. The division provides 200 companies and more than one million participants with defined benefit, defined contribution, recordkeeping and customer service, including health administration services for retirees.