Special Program Root Tag

If there is anything positive to be gleaned from the financial crisis, it is that 401(k) plan designs need to be revised so they are more resistant to extreme volatility and market downturns, Putnam Investments CEO Robert L. Reynolds told executives at the National Investment Company Service Association’s East Coast Regional Meeting in Boston.

Fidelity asked local, county and state governments in Covington, Ohio for more time to create an additional 350 jobs at its campus there. Fidelity moved to the location in 2005 and agreed to create an additional 1,500 jobs in exchange for a number of incentives, including a $17.5 million, 1.7-mile road leading to its complex.

Resource and metal mutual funds both rose an impressive 11% in September and are among the best-performing sectors year-to-date, potentially signaling an economic rebound, The Globe & Mail reports.

Invesco is in the running to acquire the fund business of Van Kampen, which has $550 billion of assets under management, and the deal could be valued anywhere between $1 billion and $2 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Invesco and TCW Group have raised more than $1.13 billion from private investors to buy toxic assets from the government as part of the Public-Private Investment Program, the Department of the Treasury indicated.

Robert McCann has settled his lawsuit with his former employer Bank of America/Merrill Lynch today, clearing the way for him to possibly head up the U.S. brokerage arm of UBS.

Standard & Poor’s has launched four securities lending indexes based on intermediary prices for stocks in its top three benchmark indexes, the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400 and S&P SmallCap 600, as well as the sector sub-indexes for the three indexes.

Jefferies Asset Management has introduced what it believes is the first commodities exchange-traded fund tied to an equities rather than a futures index, and it is planning other equities-based commodities ETFs in the near future.

“Move past the crisis,” Barclays Wealth urges investors in its latest monthly strategy update. It would be wise to position for the economic recovery since most economists are revising their growth forecasts for 2010 upwards.

After acquiring more than $1 trillion in asset-backed paper from money market funds, the Federal Reserve is considering borrowing that money back from the funds through reverse repos to ease the stimulus plan and avoid inflation, and most funds think that is a good idea.

Investors continued to pour money into long-term mutual funds, with the latest week ended Sept. 23 taking in $16.03 billion, bringing the 28-straight-week sales streak to a total of $300 billion, the Investment Company Institute said.

Dreyfus has introduced two funds-of-funds, the Dreyfus Satellite Alpha Fund and the Dreyfus Diversified Global Fund.

Bank of America has reached an agreement to sell the long-term asset management unit of Columbia Management to Ameriprise Financial for $1 billion. The bank is still considering what to do with its short-term asset management business.

Sept. 29 marks the one-year anniversary of the biggest-point drop, 778, in the history of the Dow Jones industrial average, sparked by the initial failure of the House to pass the $700 billion financial rescue plan, CNNMoney.com reports.

Wall Street bonuses have been slipping since reaching a peak of $34 billion in 2006, but with asset management firms expected to announce stellar earnings for the third quarter, those bonuses are expected to come back big time, CNNMoney.com reports.

The Rydex/SGI Advisor Confidence Index rose nearly 5% in September to 109.14, up from 105.05 in August. It was the second rise in the index, although it is still in neutral territory.

Expecting strong third-quarter earnings reports from asset management firms due to the market’s rally, analysts are upgrading their outlook on the companies.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is concerned about the additional risk investment firms take on when they put cash collateral earned from securities lending into other uses, along with the lack of true transparency in the market. Thus, the SEC will conduct a “wholesale review” of the entire securities lending marketplace in a roundtable on Tuesday.

As the Federal Reserve begins to ease its extraordinary stimulus plan and works to stave off inflation, it is reportedly considering borrowing up to $500 billion from the $3.4 trillion money market fund industry rather than the 20 leading primary dealers, which aren’t expected to be able to provide more than $100 billion, the Financial Times reports.

Morningstar has acquired a minority equity stake in PitchBook Data, a provider of data on private equity transactions, investors, companies, limited partners and service providers.