Money Management Executive Latest News

State Street Corporation said it planned to reduce its technology staff by 850 employees, as part of a multi-year transformation of how it manages its information systems.

The 225 S&P 500 companies that share full reporting information received 46.3% of their sales outside of the U.S. in 2010, down slightly from the 46.6% they received in 2009 and quite a bit less than the 47.9% that foreign sales comprised of their total revenues in 2008, S&P Indices said.

Russell Investments has promoted Len Brennan to president and chief executive officer, succeeding Andrew Doman, who is now chairman of the board. Ed Zore, who has been chairman since 2008, will remain on the board as a director.

As money market funds hold approximately $1.3 trillion in U.S. Treasuries, nearly half of their total $2.7 trillion in assets, investors would probably be spooked in the event of a default by the U.S. government and rush to the exits to redeem their shares. That is the dire warning from Fitch Ratings.

CIBC is taking a 41% stake in American Century, paying $848 million in cash for the shares that JP Morgan currently holds. JP Morgan paid $900 million for a 45% stake in American Century in 1998 and pared back its holdings over the years.

Most target-date funds are not as diversified as they could be, and particularly as they increase in popularity in 401(k) plans, their design needs to be revisited, according to Folio Investing.

Aston Asset Management has launched the Aston/DoubleLine Core Plus Fixed Income Fund. Aston will serve as the investment advisor to the fund and DoubleLine Capital, which specializes in core fixed income, mortgage-backed securities, global developed credit, emerging markets debt and global asset allocation, will act as sub-advisor.

Putting aside the debt ceiling drama currently playing out in Washington and the dire predictions of what would happen to the U.S. and the global economy if the ceiling isn’t raised by Aug. 2, Goldman Sachs’ chief U.S. economist said that even if all that doesn’t come to pass, the U.S. economy will still slow this year and next and puts the chances of a return to recession somewhere between 15% and 20%.

AQR Capital Management has launched the AQR Multi-Strategy Alternative Fund, a no-load mutual fund that seeks to deliver absolute returns by investing in a broadly diversified portfolio of alternative strategies traditionally only available through hedge funds.

Institutional investment managers are becoming more cautious, with 42% saying they became more risk-averse in the second quarter, up from 35% in the first quarter, a survey of 100 managers in June by Northern Trust found.