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Herb Allison, the former president of Merrill Lynch, was relaxing on a beach in the Virgin Islands in September 2008 when he got an urgent phone call from a senior aide to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Effective July 21, the Securities and Exchange Commission said that any new investment advisor who is managing more than $25 million and less than $100 million will have to join smaller investment advisors in registering with the state regulatory authority where she or he is based. The only exceptions are New York and Wyoming where, because those states don’t require any examination of investment advisors, all investment advisors would still have to register with and be regulated by the SEC.

U.S. ETFs are on a roll so far in 2011, according to State Street Global Advisors, which released its 2011 mid-year ETF outlook report on Thursday.

A Fidelity Investments survey released on Thursday found that a majority of Americans do not understand how their pensions work.

National Planning Holdings, Inc., one of the nation’s larger independent broker-dealer networks, announced this week it has contracted with business technology firm Erado to supply its more than 3,500 affiliated representatives with compliance services for social media applications.

A Financial Industry Regulatory Authority arbitration panel has ordered Merrill Lynch to pay $8.1 million in compensatory damages to a family corporation that claimed the firm had breached its fiduciary duty with its investments.

MassMutual has made a number of enhancements to its RetireSMART target-date and lifecycle funds, most notably adding mutual fund options to its target-date series. Previously, only separately managed accounts through a group annuity contract were offered as target-date funds.

U.S. exchange-traded funds are on pace to attract at least $100 billion in inflows this year, according to State Street Global Advisors’ report, “2011 Mid Year SPDR ETF Outlook.” In the first six months of the year, ETFs saw $56.3 billion in net inflows, a 51% increase from the $37.3 billion in net inflows in the first half of last year.

Despite declines in the stock market in May and June and growing concerns over sovereign debt and the possibility of a double-dip recession, long-term funds around the world took in $350 billion in net flows in the first six months of the year, according to Strategic Insight.

UBS Wealth Management Americas has hired two financial advisors from Oppenheimer & Co. to its Boca Raton, Fla. office.