Money Management Executive Latest News

In an effort to expand its investment management division, American Express Financial Corp. has hired three portfolio managers away from Fidelity Investments to run a new office in Boston.

Chicago-based Morningstaradvisor.com and the Financial Planning Association (FPA) will partner to offer an online tool designed to help financial advisers select a broker-dealer. The partnership was announced at the FPA's Broker-Dealer conference in Los Angeles this past weekend.

Vanguard reclaimed its title as the top seller of long-term funds in 2001 after its four-year reign as the industry's best selling fund complex ended in 2000. By reclaiming the top spot, Vanguard has shown that it is an all-season complex that can outsell other firms in both bull and bear markets, analysts said.

Problems seem to be highlighted during bear markets. When the markets were soaring two years ago, retirement plan participants watched their 401(k) assets grow, and were often lured into moving assets into specialty funds and company stocks. When things were going well, no one complained. However, after two years of a declining market was followed by the collapse of Enron, participants are starting to ask about something fund companies have been trying to talk to them about for a long time: diversification.

As Franklin Templeton's director of defined contribution services, Dan Reinhold never thought he would find himself working at, of all things, an automobile industry conference.

There has been a lot of talk about mutual funds moving away from the direct-sold channel and away from targeting the retail market, and last night's Super Bowl may have been indicative of that trend.

As equity indexes struggle to hold onto gains and recovery seems to be well hidden around the next corner, marketers have found themselves in an unfamiliar world. A report from Diversified Management Resources, Is Fund Marketing an Oxymoron?, suggests that new tactics are required to reach investors who were burned in the recent bear market. A few companies that have marketed themselves successfully may point the way for the rest of the industry.

Two companies that live up to the message in their campaigns are Vanguard Group and American Funds, said Paul Mulligan, research analyst at Diversified Management Resources. Not only does Vanguard say what it will do and then does what it says, but it has a consistent message. "They are good at communicating," Mulligan said.

With the shift from a bull market to a bear market in the past two years, many fund companies have been left holding funds that are relics from a bygone era. With a new emphasis on the bottom line, firms are increasingly merging or liquidating funds that they couldn't churn out fast enough two or three years ago.

Harry Dent Jr. is principal of the H.S. Dent Foundation and H.S. Dent Advisors, which serves as the sub-advisor to the $354 million AIM Dent Demographic Trends Fund and the Roaring 2000s Unit Investment Trust managed by Van Kampen Investments.