Special Program Root Tag

How do you reach out to gun-shy investors and get them talking to their advisors, and vice versa?

Financial services firms, including mutual fund managers, admitted that they invited negative public perception by their actions, or inactions, according to the 2012 Makovsky Wall Street Reputation Study.

Mutual funds come in every shape, size and color imaginable. How else are newcomers and smaller fund firms supposed to contend against 8,500 of their peers, already extant?

There were more than 7,693 mutual funds at the end of February 2012, according data from the Investment Company Institute.

The moment was remarkable, if not dramatic.

Investment advisor Matthew Tuttle spends a lot of time moving the money of newly-acquired clients out of mutual funds and into exchanged-traded instruments.

Los Angeles, Calif.-based Oaktree Capital Group, LLC has filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an IPO priced at $595 million with Class A units valued between $43 and $46 per share.

Lazard Asset Management LLC has launched the Lazard Global Fixed Income Portfolio targeting both institutional and individual investors.

1492 Capital Management is jumpstarting its mutual fund business with the addition of Michael Micciche as vice president of sales, responsible for developing the sales strategy across market segments and investors.

Mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. financial services industry took a dip last year but potential sell-offs in Europe could pave the way for a better M&A market for 2012 and beyond, according to a new PwC report.

ProShares has launched the ProShares UltraPro Short 20+ Year Treasury. The ETF lists on NYSE Arca today.

New York-based Clear Alternatives is ready to make a name for itself in the asset management space.

Officials at State Street Corporation today have a few billion reasons to smile.

San Francisco, Calif.-based Forward Management, advisor to Forward Funds, today said that it will close the Forward Select Income Fund to most new investors beginning March 30.

BlackRock’s Canadian investment arm, BlackRock Investments Canada, Inc., is now rebranding to iShares the names of most of the exchange-traded and closed end funds previously marketed under the Claymore Investments brand.

Mutual fund families routinely, and on purpose, use the capital in affiliated funds as “insurance pools” to offset or prevent cash shortfalls in other funds within family, according to research released by the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University.

The exodus of capital from mutual funds investing in domestic stocks slowed down last week.

In order to improve investor access to the fund, PIMCO will change the NYSE ticker for its Total Return ETF from TRXT to BOND on April 4, 2012.

T. Rowe Price today unveiled the iPad edition of T. Rowe Price Investor, the company’s quarterly magazine for mutual fund shareholders.

Guinness Atkinson Asset Management, advisor to the Guinness Atkinson Funds, has launched a new equity aimed at providing investors with current income and consistent dividend that will exceed inflation.