Special Program Root Tag

Petrozzo, DePoalo New CIOs at Fidelity

The credit crisis continues to hit the $2 trillion hedge fund industry hard (see related story, page one). More funds have left the industry, and fewer have entered, over the past six months than collectively last year.

How serious are liquidity problems with money market mutual funds?

Get a little imagination, guys.

The ongoing credit crisis saga has taken a tremendous toll on hedge funds due to their exposure to structured mortgage-backed assets-and for those heading or parsing trades overseas to avoid U.S. taxes: Beware.

Mutual fund investors held resilient in the second quarter of the year, "shrugging off weakness in the labor and housing markets and even ignoring the rising cost of oil and gas," announced Tom Roseen, senior research analyst for Lipper, during the firm's press conference last Tuesday on the quarter's results.

The growing popularity of fee-based advice is prompting mutual fund companies and other investment platform providers to upgrade the capabilities they offer advisers at banks and elsewhere.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called for a stronger central bank last week, and outlined a proposal that would provide the Fed with more regulatory control over large New York-based financial companies that are not associated with commercial banks, like Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC) and the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) are working together to introduce 12 interoperable XML-based message formats to the alternative investment community.

According to a study released by the Investment Company Institute, mutual funds voted overwhelmingly in support for management proposals in 2007, yet a mere 38% of shareholder proposals were backed.

Gerald Tsai, Jr., a legendary financial whiz and performance funds pioneer, died at the age of 79 last Wednesday. In the 1950s and 1960s, Tsai turned a canning company into Primerica, which later became the foundation of Citigroup.

Before Dennis Ferro retires as chief executive officer at Evergreen Investments, Wachovia Corp.'s investment management arm, he says that he wants to expand its alternative investment capabilities and its international distribution.

The Asian Development Bank has launched a new environmentally based mutual fund.The Future Carbon Fund is tied to environmental initiatives from the Kyoto Protocol, which is set to expire at the end of 2012.

Ameriprise Financial finalized a $440 million deal to purchase J&W Seligman in the fourth quarter. The addition of Seligman will provide Ameriprise with addition outlets to sell its mutual funds and further improve its hedge fund business.

Earlier this week, John Templeton sadly passed away at the age of 95. Templeton created the Templeton Growth Fund back in 1954, but many articles about his passing avoided this subject when they summarized his life.

With the beginning of a new fiscal quarter this month, many hoped for an end to the credit crisis that has plagued the market thus far this year. Yet these hopes have been disbanded as threats of further losses throughout financial institutions, concerns of inflation, and record high oil prices continue to persist.

According to data firm Hedge Fund Research, the $2 trillion hedge fund industry has been hit hard by the credit crisis.More funds have left the industry, and fewer have entered, over the past six months than collectively last year.

A source for the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) recently stated that the CSRC only suggested that senior mutual fund officials remain in China until the Olympics in early August to keep a stable market, they are in no which way barring them from leaving the country.

The money management unit of Wachovia Corporation, Evergreen Investments, announced Tuesday that its Chief Executive Dennis Ferro is set to retire at the end of this year. Ferro has been with the firm for five years and confirms that the status of the market and of Evergreen, in general, has had no impact on his retirement, which has been in the talks for over a year. Succeeding him will be Peter Cieszko, who is currently head of global distribution and has been with Evergreen since July 2006.

Vanguard has transferred 34 of its 38 exchange-traded funds to the NYSE Arca from the American Stock Exchange. This is a result of the merger between Amex and NYSE EuroNet, the holding company for NYSE Arca. The other four ETFs, Vanguard® Mega Cap 300 ETF, Vanguard Mega Cap 300 Growth ETF, Vanguard Mega Cap 300 Value ETF and Vanguard Total World Stock ETF, are already traded on the NYSE Arca.