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The hedge fund market is set to continue its rapid growth as institutions, under pressure to demonstrate more clearly that they can meet their future obligations, seek alternative investment products that deliver strong returns.

China Asset Management succeeded in raising the $4 billion it aimed to raise for its first global stock investment fund, which T. Rowe Price will serve as the fund’s overseas investment advisor, Reuters reports.

General Motors may need to turn over control of health-care benefits for retirees to the United Auto Workers (UAW) in order to avoid a collision with rising health-care costs, Time Magazine reports.

A federal judge in New York has dismissed a lawsuit against Citigroup that alleged its asset management division firm kept $90 million in savings by using an affiliated transfer agent and didn’t pass this along to investors or disclose it to them, the Associated Press reports.

The first sign of significant changes at Fidelity since Rodger Lawson came on as president came this week, as he announced in an internal member on Wednesday that the individual investment and workplace savings divisions would be merged under the new moniker Personal and Workplace Investing, and the human resources services unit will be standalone.

Investor groups, pensions and a senior Democrat told a House panel on Thursday that two Securities and Exchange Commission proposals on shareholders’ right to nominate directors to company boards should be thrown out, Dow Jones reports.

Bowne has hired Rob Blake as director, interactive services, a position in which he will create comprehensive extensible business reporting language (XBRL) and extensible markup language (XML) services.

The asset-weighted expense ratios for mutual funds fell to 74 basis points in 2006, down from 76 basis points the year before, according to the Investment Company Institute. That’s far lower than the average 1.5% that all stock funds charge.

Vanguard is planning to offer three new large-cap index funds, each of which will offer an exchange-traded share class, that will invest in companies with market capitalizations of $3 billion to $500 billion. They will track the MSCI US Large Cap 300 Index and two subsets of the index, one based on growth and one on value.

Although junk bonds have been falling in value along with asset-backed securities tied to subprime loans, the 50-basis-point cut in the Federal Reserve interest rate to 4.75% has resulted in widening spreads between Treasuries and junk bonds that is driving appeal for the latter, Dow Jones reports.

A survey on perceptions of mutual funds by the Luxury Institute, a research organization that caters to the high-net-worth and the companies that serve them, found that Dodge & Cox, Blackrock and Columbia are considered the most "prestigious" fund families out of a listing of 23 firms.

Pyramis, the institutional arm of Fidelity, is incubating 13 long-short funds and plans to launch four of them before the end of this year, Reuters reports. Over the next five years, Pyramis expects to attract $20 billion to long-short funds.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged two former executive vice presidents with Brean Murray with placing late trades for a number of clients, including Canary Capital.

Man Group, the world’s largest publicly traded hedge fund, indicated that for the first half of fiscal 2007 ended Sept. 30, earnings should rise more than 10% driven by a 15% spike in management fees due to strong sales.

Congress is considering two measures that would raise taxes on private equity firms, Roll Call reports. The first measure would apply to publicly traded partnerships, changing their tax structure from the capital gains to the corporate rate, while the second would raise taxes on profits used to compensate hedge fund managers, or “carried interest.”

Morningstar released the results of its fourth annual stewardship grades on 1,000 funds, and only two funds, Clipper and Selected American Shares, got a perfect score, indicating that they go far and above just obeying the law and obeying industry norms.

The President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, formed under the auspices of the Department of the Treasury, will form two private sector groups to develop best practices for the hedge fund industry, Dow Jones reports.

As in years past, 529 providers have been busy with back-to-school ads, but this year, many of them are emphasizing why 529s are a better alternative to putting assets in a child’s name due to so-called “kiddie taxes” on capital gains, Reuters reports.

Fidelity Investments has reported that assets held in its 529 college savings plan business increased 22%, to $2.4 billion, during the 12 months from September 2006 through the end of August of this year.

The Federal Reserve approved a regulation Monday that will allow banks to continue selling securities and mutual funds without registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Reuters reports.