Money Management Executive Latest News

Reserve Funds filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Friday to dismiss a class-action lawsuit originated by Third Avenue Managment over the Reserve Primary Fund. The Third Avenue Institutional Value Fund LP opposed the motion to dismiss on the grounds that Reserve misled investors into believing its once $62 billion Primary Fund was safe despite its $785 million exposure to Lehman Brothers paper.

Fidelity Investments has enhanced its custodial platform, WealthCentral, for registered investment advisors, so that it is now possible to create block orders from the portfolio modeling and rebalancing tool, as well as conduct searches more effectively.

Although some fund managers prefer to pay for their trade execution and research requirements separately in hard, rather than in soft dollars, many others rely on client commission agreements, also sometimes called commission-sharing arrangements, or CSAs, as evidenced by a recent survey of 214 mutual funds, hedge funds and pension plans.

John Harris wants the Securities and Exchange Commission to die. And the Texas native told it so, in no uncertain words, in a comment letter on August 12.

In its ongoing effort to expand its middle-market defined contribution and defined benefit business, The Hartford has hired Denise Diana as VP, retirement plans mid-market.

Buy-side firms and other market players want to expand the scope of transaction reporting to comply with European legislation on best execution to over-the-counter derivatives and introduce position reporting for OTC derivatives as well.

In the past few years, a series of converging trends have combined to place hedge funds, separately managed accounts and private banks under greater pressure than ever before. First, firms whose clients include high- and ultra-high-net-worth individuals face a never-ending battle to hold innovative, well-financed competitors at bay. At the same time, internal management continually seeks techniques to boost the productivity of relationship managers while struggling to implement sophisticated, faster trading and processing systems.

WASHINGTON - A National Bureau of Economic Research study has concluded that while Build AmericaBonds have succeeded in their mission to lower financing costs for state and local governments, traditional tax-exempt bonds still offer more enticing after-tax yields to individual investors.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has given money market funds a reprieve from following an amendment to money market fund regulations requiring them to approve of the credit rating agencies they must use to determine whether a security is eligible for investment.

The fallout from the financial reform bill is still up in the air, but the wealth management industry expects compliance and service costs to rise.