Money Management Executive Latest News

Fremont Investment Advisors has replaced the manager for its Fremont International Growth Fund. Jarislowsky Fraser Limited (JFL), a Canadian Firm with $19.6 billion under management, will take over the management of the fund effective tomorrow.

Rydex Funds is working very hard to reach its goal of attracting $10 billion in assets under management. To do that, Skip Viragh, founder of the Rockville, Md.-based firm, says appealing to the broker/dealer market is essential.

Morningstar debuted what it calls the industry’s first separate accounts database for financial advisers today at its annual investment conference in Chicago.

Old National Signature Group, the asset management unit of Old National Bancorp, has selected BISYS to provide fund administration, accounting, transfer agency, and distribution services for its new family of mutual funds. The new funds will be managed by Signal Capital Management.

Three surveys released today indicate that investors’ expectations for the financial markets have recently declined. Investors’ outlooks in June fell to their lowest levels since September and their second-lowest levels since 1996, when UBS and The Gallup Organization began tracking their Index of Investor Optimism. Currently at 72, the index had a baseline of 124 when it was established six years ago. It fell to 50 in September 2001, following the terrorist attacks and reached a high of 178 in January 2000 just before the decline in the Nasdaq 100 and S&P 500.

As baby boomers near retirement, firms will have to ask themselves how dedicated they are to capturing retirement rollover assets in individual retirement accounts (IRAs). According to a new report by Financial Research Corp. (FRC) of Boston, one of the key ways a defined contribution provider can capture those assets is to have a dedicated rollover-services call center separate from a traditional 401(k) call center.

There is little dispute that investor confidence is currently at a low, particularly as the corporate practices of many leading firms have been called into question in the past six months.

First Enron and Andersen. Then Merrill Lynch. Now ImClone.

To help explain the intricacies of options trading to investors, Kelmoore Investment Co. of Palo Alto, Calif., has turned to a portly man who wears a face mask, a skin-tight yellow leotard and a hat with a little, glowing antenna poking out of the top.

The initial public offering market has dried up over the past two years, and the reputation of the industry has been tarnished by questions about IPO laddering schemes and the conflict of interest of sell-side analysts. But one small mutual fund is registering signs of improvement for the going-public market - the $20 million IPO Plus Fund, run by Renaissance Capital of Greenwich, Conn.