Special Program Root Tag

The U.K.-based arm of Fidelity International has sold its 10%-stake in the London Stock Exchange, according to Reuters.

Small-cap funds have outpaced large-cap funds for the past five years and small-cap portfolio managers expect their win streak to continue, USA Today reports.

Publicly traded mutual fund firms have delivered stellar returns over the past two years, in many case far better than the performance of their own mutual fund portfolios, The New York Times reports.

Citing high participation and some internal rejiggering, the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund announced Thursday it plans to cut administrative fees by 40% or more.

Commodities - silver, crude oil, bushels of wheat and gold, to name a few - have been sizzling for about a year, with gold now nearing $600 an ounce. However, some mutual funds that track commodity prices are not doing nearly as well, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Vanguard CEO John Brennan dismissed the ideas that stocks may be headed for a long-term bear market and that it's become a stock-picker's market, in an interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The Boston office of the Securities and Exchange Commission has a new enforcer on the block, but his face isn't entirely unfamiliar to New England's mutual fund industry.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's independent director and independent chairman rules hit another roadblock Friday, when a federal court of appeals sent them back to the commission, giving the agency 90 days either to collect more public comment, or to let the rules become invalid, according to Marketwatch.

The May 1 deadline is coming up for entries to SourceMedia's Fourth Annual Fund Operations Awards, as presented by Money Management Executive.

Sometimes, it appears, it's not so good to be the king.

PHOENIX - Vanguard Group General Counsel Ari Gabinet likes to recall the time he was asked to speak on soft-dollar best practices at a recent conference.

A recent report suggested that mutual funds' tendency to vote with management on proxies may be part of the reason for ballooning executive pay.

Fair valuation is alive and well and being more proactively and broadly practiced among mutual funds than ever before, according to the results of Deloitte & Touche's fifth annual survey of fair-value practices.

Principal Financial Group is offering additional 401(k) marketing resources for financial advisers, including advice on: creating an effective sales and service process, developing a value proposition that clearly illustrates the adviser's value to clients, building an adviser presentation, benchmarking a prospect's 401(k) program, using an RFP system and creating investment policy and employee education policy statements.

Fidelity Investments will close its $63.8 billion Contrafund, currently its largest, to new investments as of April 28, Securities and Exchange Commission filings show. The fund has delivered an average annual return of 10% over the past five years, handily beating the S&P 500, which has averaged not quite 4% a year in that time frame. It is precisely these outsized returns that have attracted investors' attention; in the past 14 months through February, the fund has taken in $10 billion in net new flows. Fidelity said the main reason Contrafund Manager Will Danoff wants to close the fund is to protect his ability to deliver strong returns.

NEW YORK - A decade ago, investors snubbed dividends as a sign of companies incapable of growth, but since 2003, dividends have become a symbol of security and strength. And they're back in demand.

NYLIM Hires Higgins, Smythe as Vice Presidents

Companies are making a greater effort to increase the independence of their boards of directors, improve transparency and shareholder communications and tie executives' compensation to earnings. And it is safe to say that this trend to strengthen corporate governance policies will continue, according to a member survey conducted by the Business Roundtable, a Washington-based association of chief executive officers from leading U.S. companies. The survey was completed by 105 of the association's 160 members.

While recognizing that American Funds has some of the most diligent boards of directors in the business, Morningstar analyst Paul Herbert recently issued a report noting five arrears where they could do an even better job of overseeing shareholders' money.

Dissatisfied with hedge funds' average returns of 8% in 2005, a far cry from the 15% to 20% that they handily returned all throughout the 1980s and 1990s, hedge fund investors are increasingly using a risky tactic once known mostly to hedge fund managers themselves: leveraging money.