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Many investors believe hedge funds deliver returns of 20% or more each year. That may be the case in some instances, but the data available on hedge fund performance is tainted and doesn't take into account the hefty fees hedge fund managers charge and the enormous risks they assume, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Dealing with the ramifications from a client's divorce and helping a married couple who have distinctly different ideas about how to handle their finances are two of the biggest problems advisors face when consulting with wealthy clients, according to a member poll by the Dow Jones Wealth Management Advisory Council.

In a reversal from its previous position that it would not sell its subsidiary Putnam Investments, Marsh & McLennan is now exploring how much it could get from such a sale.

Fidelity Investments announced the launch of the Fidelity Research Institute Wednesday. Drawing upon the talents of Fidelity's own investment professionals, the group will work with academics, policy-makers and other financial service providers to help educate the public, the media and the government on investing issues ranging from retirement to health care to insurance to real estate to college savings.

Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman announced Tuesday it is investigating whether Dell violated its fiduciary responsibilities to its 401(k) plan by offering company stock as an investment option in the plan and not releasing the firm's true financial condition.

Ed Rogers, who headed Deutsche Bank's prime services business in Japan through May and now runs, is planning to launch a $500 million Japan hedge fund-of-funds and is working with Wolver Hill Asset Management to raise the money, Bloomberg reports.

Workers at MFS Investment Management fear their jobs could be at risk once parent Sun Life Financial sells the company, the Boston Herald reports.

The New York Stock Exchange and other regulators are shifting the focus of their market-timing investigations from mutual fund companies and hedge funds to individual brokers and their supervisors, Susan Merrill chief of enforcement for the NYSE said, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The NASD Tuesday fined three MetLife Securities companies $5 million for allowing late trading of mutual funds, providing inaccurate and misleading information to the NASD and failing to produce e-mails in a timely fashion.

Three-quarters of the flows to mutual funds so far this year, or $113 billion, have been to international funds, Bloomberg reports.

Morningstar has published commentary urging the Securities and Exchange Commission not to back down on its independent chairman rule.

Sun Life Financial issued a release Monday acknowledging that it is exploring "strategic alternatives" to grow its MFS Investment Management business.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is about to issue its first guidance on how mutual fund companies caught up in the trading scandal can calculate the $2.5 billion due to shareholders through reimbursements, and investors can expect the first checks to be mailed before the end of the year, a SEC spokesman tells MarketWatch.

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has indicted Trautman Wasserman broker James Wilson and charged him with 11 counts for placing late mutual fund trades on behalf of the firm's hedge fund clients between November 2000 and September 2003. Each of the charges carries up to four years in jail and a penalty up to $5,000, or double the amount of the gain from the criminal conduct.

The hot run on commodities funds--particularly those focused on gas and oil--seems to have begun cooling, according to The Wall Street Journal.

On the heels of a court victory repealing requirements for them to register--and subsequent promises from regulators to watch them closely--hedge fund managers seem to be betting on political campaigns this year, according to MSNBC.

One of the top money managers at Robert W. Baird, Mary Ellen Stanek, has been accused by a rival firm of trading initial public offerings in her own account, rather than in the mutual funds and separately managed accounts intended for clients, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. The firm, Red Granite, also implied that Stanek and four other executives at Baird did not hold proper securities licenses.

Putnam Investments parent Marsh & McLennan on Friday announced plans to chop 750 employees from its payroll and undertake several other cost-cutting initiatives, including consolidating locations and retooling its information technology teams.

After surveying 1,000 small business owners with no more than 20 employees about 401(k)s, Fidelity Investments found that 43% don't want to offer them because they mistakenly think they are too expensive.

NEW YORK-As regulators move toward more data-intensive investigations, the relationship between hedge funds and their broker/dealers will receive increased scrutiny, said Linda Chatman Thomsen, director of the Securities and Exchange Commission's division of enforcement.