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Putnam Investments has launched a health reimbursement account for labor unions.

Genworth Financial has signed an agreement to acquire AssetMark Investment Services, another separately managed account adviser that sells through independent financial advisers, for $230 million at closing and an additional $110 million a year for five years, provided certain requirements are met, for a potential total of $780 million. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter.

Mellon Financial has introduced the Global Alpha Fund, a mutual fund that employs a number of macro hedge fund strategies, HedgeWorld News reports.

Morningstar has added hedge fund information to its website for individual investors and to its adviser workstation for financial planners, rounding out the availability of the information, which heretofore had only been available to institutional customers since 2005.

Financial advisers fail to help investors improve their returns in mutual funds, according to a new academic report, The Toronto Star reports. The research, head by Peter Tufano, a senior associate dean at Harvard Business School, is based on analysis of the returns in 4,541 mutual funds that investors purchased between 1996 and 2002. As of 2002, two-thirds of the $3.8 trillion in assets held in those funds were purchased through a professional broker or adviser.

Wells Fargo Funds Distributor has begun offering registered target-date mutual funds that track the performance of the global series of the Dow Jones Target Date Indexes.

Equity stock funds have increased their exposure to stocks, which could prove disastrous to investors should the market continue to decline, the Associated Press reports.

Flows to mutual funds in May of $5.3 billion were the lowest in two years, Bloomberg reports, citing data from Financial Research Corp. Investors are reacting strongly to stock markets around the world, which began declining early in the month. In fact, their investments were down 83% from the $31.3 billion they put into funds in April.

Putnam Investments has been losing mutual fund assets for five years running now, Bloomberg reports. The company suffered another $2.3 billion in net withdrawals in May, bringing its total assets down to $94.5 billion, less than half of the $19.7 billion

The Retirement Income Industry Association announced Monday that it had started a retirement income planning educational program for financial advisers.

Although Roth 401(k)s have only been available for the past three months, nearly 8% of workers are electing this option, according to a study of three large defined contribution plans representing 61,000 participants, Hewitt Associates found, according to a report by Dow Jones. And that jumps to a participation rate of nearly 25% when workers are newly enrolling in a 401(k) plan.

Although Roth 401(k)s have only been available for the past three months, nearly 8% of workers are electing this option, according to a study of three large defined contribution plans representing 61,000 participants, Hewitt Associates found, according to a report by Dow Jones. And that jumps to a participation rate of nearly 25% when workers are newly enrolling in a 401(k) plan.

With investor demand for dividend income increasing, assets in global real estate investment trusts (REITs) have quadrupled so far this year to $2.52 billion in assets through the end of April, Bloomberg reports.

Dubai has just enacted a collective investment law to provide guidance for mutual funds, hedge funds and private equity funds to put the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) on par with other leading offshore financial centers, including New York, London and Hong Kong, Financial Times reports.

Although large-cap funds have outperformed small-cap funds for three straight months now, investors appear to be wary of moving into them, instead favoring multi-cap funds, The Wall Street Journal reports. The volatility of the stock market, inflation fears and the prospect of slowing economic growth are what has put investors on edge.

Financial advisers are delving a little deeper when it comes to their wealthy clients, The Wall Street Journal reports. Increasingly, much as other industries, including retailing, real estate and pharmaceuticals already do, they are using psychological profiles to find out what makes them tick.

Many fund companies fail to offer asset allocation tools to their investors, according to a report from Corporate Insight.

Many fund companies fail to offer asset allocation tools to their investors, according to a report from Corporate Insight.

Citigroup has swapped its asset management division in exchange for Legg Mason brokers and stock, Bloomberg reports.

Vanguard has extended its Admiral share class to its Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund.