Money Management Executive Latest News

Atlantic Trust Private Wealth Management, a division of AMVESCAP, has hired Stephen Prostano as chief operating officer and chief financial officer. In addition, Paul Elmlinger has joined the firm as general counsel. Both will report to the firm's CEO, Donald Herrema.

Last year, mutual fund and variable annuity sales through third-party marketers at banks dropped, but fixed annuities had a boom year, according to a report from Ken Kehrer Associates, a consulting and research firm in Princeton, N.J. The report tracked sales of funds and annuities solely through third-party marketers at banks; many banks, particularly large banks, still sell these products through their own broker/dealers

Evergreen Investments of Boston has launched a product line of nine separately managed accounts, each of which will focus on a specific investment category but allow investors to further customize their holdings.

Fund researcher Morningstar has partnered with an information portal for financial advisers in a deal that will make its services more widely available, the company said this week.

Equity mutual funds appear to have continued gaining new money in April, according to mutual fund research firms. Equity funds experienced net inflows of roughly $14.9 billion last month according to Lipper of New York. Strategic Insight, also of New York, estimates that April’s equity fund inflows reached $21 billion. That follows a very strong March, when equity inflows reached $29.28 billion, the highest total since April 2000, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Once the recession is over and the markets begin to pick up, TowerGroup expects a new wave of mergers and acquisitions in the financial services industry, according to Mark Sievewright, president and CEO of TowerGroup.

In its annual Portfolio Awards contest, the Financial Communications Society awarded gold awards to MassMutual Financial Group and AGF Mutual Funds for print advertising campaigns they ran last year. They were the only two fund companies to win gold awards among a group of 11 financial service companies that received the top honor.

Manufacturers Life Insurance Co. is offering employers a new service that will allow their employees to automatically invest in a 529 college savings plan.

Nuveen Investments said today that it plans to launch a closed-end exchange-traded fund that will specialize in taxable preferred stocks. A public offering for the fund is expected in June.

Morgan Stanley later this year will begin rating 30 index-linked exchange-traded funds out of a total of 119 such funds. The tracked batch will include 25 U.S. equity index funds and five international indexes. The domestic funds will include eight broad market funds; 10 sector funds; six style, growth and value funds; and one industry fund.