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For many planners with high-net-worth minimums for their clients, target-date funds don’t make sense for a variety of reasons. But in the right circumstances, they can be helpful tools.

Wasatch Funds has launched what it touts as “one of the few no-load open-end mutual funds focused exclusively on frontier and smaller emerging market countries,” including Africa and Southeast Asia.

PrimeVest Financial Services gained 273 advisors in 2011, lifting its total registered representative force to more than 1,600, the firm announced today.

The top concern was over the quality and selection of investment options in traditional plans, with over half of RIAs surveyed naming this as their chief issue.

PrimeVest Financial Services gained 273 advisors in 2011, lifting its total registered representative force to more than 1,600, the firm announced today.

State Street Corporation has appointed Dick Taggart to the post of head of Middle Office Outsourcing Operations across North America for the company’s investment manager services business.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has voted to issue for public comment a proposed auditing standard on related-party transactions, and to amend standards on significant unusual transactions and auditors of broker-dealers.

An arbitration panel shot down a claimant’s request for up to $2.9 million for allegedly botched investments tied to private placements and Ponzi schemes last week, and instead ordered her to pay almost $136,000 in costs and expert witness fees.

There’s a lot of investor and advisor interest in alternative investments as a means to hedge against market volatility and to diversify a portfolio (all while boosting returns). Steve Hammers, chief investment officer and portfolio manager of the Compass EMP Alternative Strategies Fund, spoke to Financial Planning about how to design and evaluate an alternatives strategy:

Wells Fargo Funds Management, LLC, the investment advisor to Wells Fargo Advantage Funds, has rolled out a fund that will invest in a wide range of alternative investments.