Special Program Root Tag

Lipper presented awards Tuesday night to U.S. fund companies at a ceremony in New York.

The NASD has fined Boston Capital Securities $1.2 million for improper financial disclosure and compensation, as the firm continued to sell limited partnerships to the public even though the NASD issued it a deficient notice.

Google has launched, in beta test, a new financial website that offers news on stocks and mutual funds, quotes, chat rooms, charts and links to related information, including even blogs.

Fidelity Investments is considering switching the benchmark for its Blue Chip Growth Fund from the S&P 500 Index to the Russell 100 Growth Index, The Wall Street Journal reports. Fidelity is putting the matter to a shareholder vote in May.

European pension funds and insurance companies have increasingly turned to London-based hedge funds, doubling the size of the U.K. industry's market share of the entire hedge fund universe in just three years, according to Bloomberg.

Anticipating the approval of the Barclays Silver ETF, silver prices were at their highest in more than 22 years and are expected to move even higher if the investment fund is approved, according to MarketWatch.

We've all heard the saying, "What goes up must come down," and that is precisely why fund managers are becoming increasingly cautious on foreign small-cap stocks, MarketWatch reports.

The first major feat of succeeding in Japan, certainly, is cracking a market that is largely investment-averse. But at Nikko Asset Management, where an American-led restructuring is taking place, the evolution extends internally, the Financial Times reports.

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has subpoenaed a division of AXA Financial, AXA Equitable Life Insurance Co., on suspicions that it may have allowed market timing through its variable annuities and other insurance products, an SEC filing shows.

As a result of the departure of three of its key small-cap portfolio managers and the promotion of one of them, Henry Lange, to run its flagship Magellan Fund, Fidelity has reassigned a number of its small-cap skippers. And this has some industry insiders a little concerned about the disruption to the funds and the short track records of their replacements, many of whom were previously analysts.

Although the mutual fund industry continues to hit milestones, business could still be better, The Arizona Republic reports.

Vanguard filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission Monday to offer five additional target retirement funds, expanding its current lineup of five funds plus one income fund, which have a total of $10 billion in assets.

PHOENIX, ARIZ. - Investment Company Institute President Paul Schott Stevens announced yesterday that his organization has launched an initiative that would eventually move mutual fund disclosure documents almost exclusively online.

Six months after abruptly resigning as sole manager, president and treasurer of the $48 million Vice Fund, Dan S. Ahrens is looking to casinos, lottery programs and video games as his next bet.

Federal filings by the nation's second-largest bank Thursday showed the company violated U.S. tax law in 1998 and 1999 by allowing employees to move 401(k) holdings to the company's pension plan, according to the Charlotte Observer.

Securities and Exchange Commissioner Roel Campos, in a speech last Thursday, called attention to the fact that many 401(k) plans do not offer investors the same kind of disclosure that mutual funds sold directly do, Reuters reports. Specifically, Campos said, many 401(k) investors do not receive prospectuses or quarterly reports and therefore receive "little or no disclosure regarding the performance of their retirement products."

Fidelity Investments has struck an agreement with Amazon.com whereby it has set up a financial services destination, or so-called "store," to promote its mutual funds, retirement products, college savings offerings, IRAs, annuities and brokerage services.

H&R Block CEO Mark A. Ernst defended his company's "Express IRA" product and accused New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer of launching an "unfair attack" on his company, in a letter to the Wall Street Journal published Friday.

The NASD has fined Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith $5 million for supervisory failures, impermissible sales contests, unsuitable mutual fund switches and other violations between 2001 and 2004 at two of its call centers, in Hopewell, N.J., and Jacksonville, Fla. The firm has also been prohibited from staging any other sales contests for three years and is required to hire an independent consultant to oversee its compliance programs.

Credit raters' credibility came under fire once again this month as Investment Company Institute President Paul Schott Stevens called for increased competition among and oversight of credit rating agencies.