Money Management Executive Latest News

Continues to Expand High-Net-Worth Services

Adds INVESCO as Fifth Sub-advisor on Special Equity Fund

In back-to-back deals Boston investment management firm Eaton Vance Corp. acquired majority stakes in two asset management firms in an effort to ramp up its separate accounts business and pump new products into the financial advice distribution channel.

With market performance dreadful for most funds, there has been a rapid increase in sub-advisor switches, right?

John Hancock Funds has introduced a full dealer reallowance across its domestic equity, tax-free and government bond funds. While the firm has recently made focused offers for product releases, this incentive program is a more broad-based campaign aimed at drawing attention to the complex.

Leo Wells plopped on an office chair in a drab, Atlanta TV studio and prepared for his interview. There were television cameras and monitors, walls designed to absorb sound, a booth with all sorts of knobs and gadgets. But there were no reporters, no anchors and no show hosts to machine-gun questions at the president of Wells Real Estate Funds.

Stilwell Financial reported net income of $90.4 million for the second quarter, down over 40% from 2000. Those figures include certain non-recurring expenses, without which, net income is down about 30%.

If anyone should expect a return on an investment, it should be asset managers. So where's the return on all of the time and money fund companies have spent on Web sites and e-commerce? And given the economic slump, how long will companies continue to pump money into Internet marketing?

Other than money-market funds, all categories of mutual funds experienced net inflows in June, according to the Investment Company Institute. Still, total mutual fund assets decreased $85 billion to $6.94 trillion.

A House subcommittee approved the Retirement Security Advice Act Thursday afternoon, prompting its proponents to insist that the House will pass it by year's end. It was the quickest markup of a bill in the history of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, lasting a short six minutes. But brewing far from the corridors of those meeting halls is an opposition that hopes for the bill's demise in the Senate.