Money Management Executive Latest News

What do American Century, Vanguard, Frank Russell Company, MFS and SEI Investments share in common? All of the companies made this year’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list published by Fortune magazine.

Pilgrim Baxter & Associates has selected Mike Thompson to lead the marketing of its institutional services, the company said today.

As the trend continues away from commission-based investing, toward fee-based accounts, the number of brokerages that have transitioned to offer fee-based services has jumped dramatically in the past two years, from 98 firms to 171, according to a recent study. Caught in the middle of this development are investors who, despite not being active participants, could possibly end up paying more for the maintenance of their accounts than if they were paying by trade.

Retirement plan providers are closely eyeing the new employer-only 401(k) plans as a vehicle that could capture greater rollover assets, open new markets and provide inroads to the high-net-worth crowd.

Last summer, just after Congress approved President Bush's tax plan, most investors knew they had a small rebate check from the IRS coming in the mail. But they didn't know the following: They could now withdraw money tax-free from their 529 programs; they could likely increase contributions to their retirement programs and IRAs; and those 50 and older could probably put more money into their retirement accounts.

It's beginning to look a lot like...tax season.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's comment period on actively managed exchange-traded funds ended last week, but the new type of ETFs that will likely soon be approved by the Commission are those based on fixed-income indices.

Exchange-traded fund assets have risen dramatically over the past three years, though the products are not widely known, never mind understood, by retail investors. One of the reasons is that brokers and financial advisers aren't talking to clients about ETFs or really pushing them at all. That was one of the conclusions from a study commissioned by the American Stock Exchange and presented at its ETF conference held in New York last week. The study, conducted by Harris Interactive, bases its results on a survey of 2,337 investors and 200 brokers and financial advisers between August 29 and September 10, 2001.

Just as individual investors have shown a growing preference to use an investment adviser to handle their financial decisions, asset management firms are relying more heavily on sub-advisers to run their mutual funds, according to industry analysts.

Neuberger Berman hired two managing directors to develop the firm's real estate investment capabilities and also named a new managing director for its private asset management group, the company said.