Special Program Root Tag

U.S. firms were the most active acquirers of emerging markets companies in the first half of 2011, according to KPMG International, closing 144 deals. This was nearly twice the 82 acquisitions by Canada. The U.K. made 62 deals, followed by Japan, with 61.

The Dow Jones Credit Suisse Hedge Fund Index fell for a second straight month, finishing down 3.2% in September, but beating the Dow Jones Global Index’s 9.88% decline.

The Mutual Fund Directors Forum has named Susan Ferris Wyderko as president and chief executive officer, replacing Forum founding President Allan Mostoff, who will retire on Dec. 31.

Former Wasatch Portfolio Managers Robert Gardiner and Blake Walker, who formed Grandeur Peak Global Advisors, have launched their first two mutual funds: the Grandeur Peak Global Opportunities Fund and the Grandeur Peak International Opportunities Fund.

In light of the continued market volatility, Russell Indexes is expanding its Defensive and Dynamic Indexes to cover all 10,000 stocks that it tracks around the world.

Vanguard has filed with the SEC to offer the Vanguard Target 2060 Retirement Fund for those currently 18 to 20 years old, and early next year will merge the Vanguard Target Retirement 2005 Fund and the Vanguard Target Retirement Income Fund, as their allocations have become nearly identical.

Investors contributed $748 million to Fidelity Charitable, the largest donor-advised fund in the U.S., in the first nine months of 2011, a 23% increase from the first three quarters of 2010. Thus, the fund is on course to receive the largest amount of contributions in its 20-year history, Fidelity said.

Investors pulled $3.93 billion from long-term mutual funds in the week ended Oct. 19, the Investment Company Institute said.

Tweets are ‘static content’ in the eyes of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, which operates a network of 18,000 financial advisers.

Mutual fund managers prided themselves on sticking to their investment mandates early on in the financial crisis of 2008. This, even as the average U.S. stock fund fell nearly 30% in value. They counseled investors to do the same. Three years later, there is a new direction for funds: the flexibility to go anywhere, to pay closer attention to macroeconomic and market trends, and to even hunker down in cash.

The financial crisis of 2008, when the S&P 500 lost 39.2% in value, and the ensuing market volatility in the three years since, have served as a sobering wake-up call for the wealth management industry. And are dramatically changing the way it plans to do business in the years ahead.

At the start of October, the Investment Company Institute announced it was going global. Or, rather, it announced the creation of ICI Global, a new arm that would as a trade association for global investment funds, their managers and investors.

NEW YORK—Running its quantitative screens for its annual rebalancing, the Hennessy Focus 30 Fund turned up two sectors that at first puzzled Neil Hennessy, chairman and chief investment officer of Hennessy Funds. Energy. And utilities.

Charles River Development has officially launched a new data management platform that will help fund managers integrate reference, issuer, benchmark-index and pricing data into their front- and middle-office applications.

BNY Mellon Asset Servicing will allow authorized participants in exchange-traded fund transactions to place orders one day ahead of the actual trade date.

UBS said the “unauthorized trading incident” that led to a $2.3 billion loss in its third quarter was not “sufficiently investigated” when detected.

Although the State Street Investor Confidence Index is still below 100, indicating institutional investors’ appetite for equities and other risky assets is neutral, the index jumped significantly by 6.7 points to a reading of 96.7 in October—underscoring marked and continued improvement in institutional investors’ outlook.

State Street Global Advisors, the asset management business of State Street Corporation, has announced changes to the indices and names of five financial industry SPDR ETFs.

PowerShares QQQ has signed on as the title sponsor of the Champions Series national tennis circuit in a multi-year contract that costs seven figures a year—significantly upgrading its event sponsorship solely in Chicago. The agreement kicks off with a 12-city tour featuring tennis icons Andre Agassi, Pete Sampras, John McEnroe and Jim Courier.

Having made changes to the fund’s investment capacity, the $6.6 billion Eaton Vance Macro Absolute Return Fund is reopened to additional investments.