Special Program Root Tag

Investors began to return to U.S. equity and global sector equity funds in the first quarter, with U.S. diversified equity funds seeing $11.3 billion in inflows and global sector funds experiencing $14.8 billion in inflows, Standard & Poor’s said, citing Lipper data.

Waddell & Reed Financial, the Overland Park, Kansas, mutual fund complex, said it earned $45.6 million, or $0.53 per diluted share, in the first quarter.

The Bloomberg Consumer Confidence Index climbed for the fourth straight month, reaching -42.6, the best reading since the end of February.

PIMCO is planning to launch a Total Return bond exchange-traded fund that will be managed by Bill Gross and disclose its holdings daily rather than monthly, a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows.

Nearly one in five Americans, 19%, have drawn on their retirement savings in the past year to cover emergencies, a survey of 1,004 adults by Princeton Survey Research Associates International for Bankrate in early April found.

Exchange-traded funds are likely to grab a “significant” share of the 401(k) market in coming years, according to Skip Schweiss, president of TD Ameritrade Trust Co.

Eighty-five percent of buy-side firms are unprepared for regulatory changes, a survey by MoneyMate, a data management firm, found.

The Egyptian stock market shut down Jan. 27, with street protests leading eventually to the overthrow of the government led for more than three decades by Hosni Mubarak. The question? When would the market re-open? And what would happen to the securities that American and other foreign institutions thought they owned?

One instrument. One ID. One universal code.

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney has revamped the leadership structure for its wealth management business, according to an internal memo sent by the firm's Global Wealth Management President Greg Fleming.

If asset managers want to reach and appear relevant to the 51 million Generation X and 80 million Generation Y populations, they must actively post "remarkable and fresh content" on the three biggest social media outlets: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. No question about it. That was the message from Barbara Kotlyar, senior marketing manager of data aggregator ByAllAccounts, and Loic Jeanjean, director of web marketing at financial services Internet design firm Advisor Websites, during a recent Web seminar, "Attracting Gen X & Y Clients With Social Media."

FINRA has fined Jefferies & Co. $1.5 million, ordered the investment bank to repay $425,000 in ill-gotten commissions and fees and suspended a pair of its brokers for failing to disclose additional compensation to institutional clients and other conflicts of interest related to shady sales of auction rate securities between August 2007 and March 2008.

FINRA has fined UBS Financial Services $2.5 million and ordered it to pay $8.25 million in restitution for conduct related to the sale of Lehman Brothers Holdings principal protection notes.

As more investors buy shares of mutual fund companies through their broker-dealers, those broker-dealers are taking on processing tasks that would otherwise be done by the mutual fund companies or their service providers.

Morgan Stanley’s global wealth management business net revenue rose to $3.4 billion for the first quarter, while its total advisor ranks dipped to 17,800 in line with previously reported plans for cuts.The wealth management business’ net revenue was up from $3.1 billion from the previous year due to higher commissions and asset-based revenue. The group had pre-tax income of $348 million compared with $278 million for the first quarter of 2010.

T. Rowe Price reported Thursday that quarterly earnings surged, but missed analysts’ lofty expectations.The Baltimore-based fund company reported a 27% increased in profits from a year earlier to $194.6 million, or 72 cents a share as net revenue rose 23% to $682.4 million.

Aided by a strong tailwind from market appreciation, Janus Capital Group reported an increase in profits in the first quarter as assets under management and revenue rose.The Denver mutual fund company’s earnings increased 21% to $37.9 million, or 21 cents per share, from a year earlier. Revenue was up 7.5% to $265.4 million.

Despite the recent improvements in the economy, Americans continue to grow more pessimistic about long-term retirement prospects, according to a Country Financial survey of 3,000 adults.

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index rose 0.4% in March to 114.1 (2004 = 100), following a 1.0% rise in February and a 0.2% gain in January. This puts the index at an all-time high, The Conference Board

BlackRock said it earned 35% more in this year’s first quarter, than last, helped by a “robust” pipeline of assignments for its software and technology services business.