Money Management Executive Latest News

Vanguard’s exchange-traded funds continue to increase in popularity among investors in the United States, the company reported today.

Conventional wisdom has it that today’s low investment yields tend to harm low-income retirees, who receive little or nothing from the bank accounts and bonds they had counted on for spending money. That’s certainly the case, but a recent study from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) found that low yields have even more impact on younger workers as well as on people with high incomes. Agreeing with those conclusions, Barton Close, vice president of investments, in the Chattanooga office of Raymond James & Associates, told On Wall Street, “Those low yields have turned around my strategies 180 degrees. Now I put more focus on current cash flow.”

One of the leading contenders to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, Lawrence Summers, has been a paid consultant to Citigroup and other financial institutions, which opponents of his nomination are likely to focus on.

A replacement for Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will not be named by President Obama until this fall according to a senior White House official.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch launched Monday an analytics dashboard aimed at helping treasurers handle their cash.

Former UBS AG executive Peter Ghavami was sentenced to 18 months in prison for rigging what should have been competitive bids to handle municipal-bond investment deals.

Goldman Sachs portfolio manager and executive Donald J. Mulvihill Jr. died on July 19 at age 56 in the Chicago area.

Federal prosecutors brought criminal charges against SAC Capital on Thursday. Dubbing SAC “a veritable magnet of market cheaters,” authorities argued that the company allowed a “systematic” insider trading scheme to play out between 1999 to 2010. It is deemed that the scheme generated profits for the firm in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Asset management mergers and acquisitions are on the rise and all signs are pointing to another healthy year for deal activity.

As Roth 401(k) plans continue to spread, young workers increasingly are voting to go Roth. In the first quarter of 2013, 10% of all participants in Wells Fargo-administered defined contribution plans contributed to a Roth 401(k), when available, up from 8.9% a year earlier. Leading the way were employees under age 30: 16.9% chose the Roth route, a jump from 15.2% participation in last year’s first quarter. (Only 4% of participants in their 60s chose the Roth version this year.)