Money Management Executive Latest News

Firms like Fidelity and Vanguard naturally have an easier time at developing their brand names because they can throw huge amounts of money at advertising and marketing campaigns. It doesn't matter that a firm like Fidelity offers a variety of products and services because they advertise so extensively, Dettore said. Still, when an investor thinks of Fidelity, does one brand or logo come to mind? Probably not, he said. "I think there's a lot of confusion," he said.

It appears Tom Pence has successfully broken free of the golden handcuffs Conseco Capital Management tried to slap on him while he was a top manager there. A lawsuit the Carmel, Ind.-based firm filed against Pence for allegedly breaking conditions of a contract he signed when he left the firm has been settled, Pence confirmed.

The terrorist attacks that struck New York and Washington earlier this month have resulted in the cancellation or rescheduling of several industry conferences.

While the nation's airlines resumed flights a few weeks ago, some fund wholesalers remain grounded as a result of travel bans their firms imposed following the terrorist attacks. That has created a difficult situation for many fund companies that want to provide face-to-face contact with their intermediaries and producers during a difficult time, but find that getting from point A to point B is no longer a simple matter of getting on the next available flight.

Right now, everyone needs the middleman.

Read his report and you get a rosy picture of a thriving industry, a historical snapshot less than a year old, of booming fund flows and wholesalers reaping tremendous gains. But talk to the man himself and the picture changes: an industry hobbled by a declining economy, wounded by terrorist attacks and marked by bare-essentials thinking.

Nervous investors are apparently giving bear funds another look after last month's terrorist attacks sent already troubled markets into turmoil.

In a market downturn, when few funds are performing spectacularly if even well, the best managers may be able to do is beat each other. The category that a fund is placed in by fund trackers like Morningstar and Lipper becomes even more important, as firms seek return figures above zero by being above their counterparts.

Fund managers may not be bailing out of the mutual fund industry in droves. But at least two investment firms have decided in recent weeks to exit the open-end fund business altogether, choosing to refocus their investment management efforts in what they consider are their true areas of expertise.

Chuck Fawcett, V.P. of alliances at Federated Investors, which has acquired three small fund groups over the past 18 months including the three Rightime Funds with a collective $400 million in assets, hasn't seen an overwhelming number of fund management companies abandoning the mutual fund business.