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Financial services research and mutual funds rating company Dalbar awarded New York Life Investment Management Company its 2005 mutual fund service award.

Large employers have begun to freeze their traditional pension plans and to automate 401(k) features to push employees to save for retirement, according to USA Today.

After giving several explanations as to why he participated in a 2002 case involving a mutual company with which he invests, U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito, Jr. seems to have narrowed it down to one, according to accounts from The Washington Post.

The Securities and Exchange Commission plans to take action against Perry Capital, a hedge fund company, for allegedly violating disclosure rules last year when trying to influence a merger battle, according to Comtex News Network.

The Securities and Exchange Commission plans to take action against Perry Capital, a hedge fund company, for allegedly violating disclosure rules last year when trying to influence a merger battle, according to Comtex News Network.

An official of the Internal Revenue Service is currently encouraging Congress to mandate that financial services firms disclose to the government what investors pay for their stocks and mutual funds, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Small investors looking to mitigate risk and employ a diverse strategy, but who don't know how to choose that one fund manager who will do it all might want to consider multi-management funds, according to an Associated Press feature.

Reverberations from the collapse of derivatives broker Refco may have PlusFunds Group on some shaky ground, according to MarketWatch.com.

As the number of lifestyle funds continues to swell and the rate of their asset growth surpasses regular equity funds, mutual fund companies are beginning to try and differentiate their lifestyle funds with increasingly diversified lifestyle funds, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Shareholders of Janus Capital Group's voted this past Monday to approve performance-related fees, according to a Dow Jones Newswire.

ETFs have always been known for their tax-efficiency, but a recent report by Lipper has placed uncertainty over whether they have recently lived up to their reputation, according to the Financial Times.

Daniel Calugar, the former owner of the broker/dealer Security Brokerage, agreed to pay $103 million in ill-gotten gains and a civil penalty of $50 million to settle charges of late trading and market timing, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday. The civil penalty is the largest that the SEC has imposed on any person or company in the mutual fund trading scandal to date.

With a possible transition from head prosecutor to chief executive of New York State looming, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer seems to be rethinking some of his rhetoric.

Despite a lackluster close to 2005, mutual fund investors should give thanks that November's strong performance led to overall fourth-quarter gains of between 4% and 5%. In 2005, domestic funds gained 7.2%on average.

The Growth Fund of America from American Funds is now the nation's largest mutual fund, as its A shares alone comprise $71.5 billion in assets, according to USA Today.

Mutual funds are making their way back on Wall Street, because hedge funds have not been performing too well lately, and those executives that left their jobs to manage hedge funds are running back to prominent firms, according to The New York Times.

The Securities and Exchange Commission rushed to judgment on the independent chairman rule, failed to research how much the new requirement would cost the industry and relied on new data from multiple sources without seeking the public's input.

The NASD has charged Oppenheimer & Co. and the firm's CEO Albert Lowenthal for intentionally supplying flawed data in response to its request for firms' breakpoint discount practices on sales of Class A shares. Separately, the NASD has also fined the firm $250,000 for failing to report broker misconduct to regulators, brokerages and the public.

Since their creation in 1993, exchange-traded funds reaped their greatest monthly inflows in November, taking in $25.12 billion, according to data from the Investment Company Institute. By last count, they had $288.95 billion in assets.

In another nod to the growing popularity of index funds, Fidelity Investments has launched three new, low-cost Treasury bond index funds, the Boston-based company said late last week.