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UBS Investment Management has launched two ETRACs exchange-traded notes linked to the performance of the UBS Internet IPO Index, which is comprised of 20 social networking, Internet software and Internet services stocks that have gone public within the last three years.

Sixty-seven percent of America’s middle-income Baby Boomers expect that their retirement experience will be drastically different from their parents’, a survey by the Bankers Life and Casualty Company Center for a Secure Retirement found.

Americans’ outlook for the economy darkened in June, a Harris Interactive poll of 2,183 adults in mid July found. Thirty-one percent are afraid that the economy will worsen in the coming year, 41% don’t expect any improvement, and only 26% are hoping things will pick up in the coming year.

Federated Investors has completed its acquisition of $509 million in mutual fund assets covering equities, fixed income and money markets from EquiTrust Series Fund and EquiTrust Variable Insurance Series Fund.

There is a lot of concern among investors about the looming Aug. 2 debt ceiling crisis, with investors wondering whether they should take steps to protect their assets in the event of a major crisis such as soaring interest rates and a decline in bond prices or even a stock market crash.

SunAmerica Asset Management has launched the SunAmerica Global Trends Fund, a fund sub-advised by Wellington Management and that combines 10 global asset classes with a rules-based asset allocation strategy that seeks to move in and out of changing markets.

Half of all companies say they are likely to take such defensive actions as cutting capital spending and laying people off if the U.S. government defaults on its obligations, a survey of 305 finance and treasury executives by the Association for Financial Professionals found.

BlackRock said Thursday it is moving the production of its research on exchange-traded funds to a new unit and the long-timer producer of its "ETF Landscape" reports will be leaving the company.

Citing "regulations written for banking institutions," the insurance giant has put its $16 billion-asset depository on the block. MetLife, which ranks among the top 15 home lenders, would continue writing mortgages. But it would do so as part of the so-called shadow banking system.

On the one-year anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Act, Democratic lawmakers and key financial regulators called on Congress to resist Republican efforts to cut funding to implement and enforce the law's sweeping new regulations.