Special Program Root Tag

According to new figures from the Investment Company Institute, worldwide mutual fund assets for the first quarter of 2005 were $16.3 trillion, or about the same level they were last year.

The U.S. fund Lone Star has reportedly appointed Citigroup to sell its 51% venture in Korea Exchange Bank, according to an Aug. 18 report from Reuters.

The legal drama between Rocker Partners and Overstock.com took another step yesterday, as the New York hedge fund called the online retailer's lawsuit "patently" frivolous" and promised to file a countersuit.

Evidently, there's something to be said for a one-man show.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is gearing up to take the hedge fund industry "under its wing," in an effort to regulate the $1 trillion industry and give investors the confidence of knowing that there's a regulator on the beat.

Based on the fact that S&P 500 mutual funds track the same index, it could be assumed that any one of the 65 funds is as good as the other, but a recent study by the Investment Company Institute suggests otherwise.

PFPC, a leading provider of back office services to the mutual fund industry, announced yesterday that Edward J. Mills has joined the company as a vice president and senior director.

Buoyed by increased revenue in its money management business, profits climbed 18% in the fiscal third quarter at the Boston investment management firm Eaton Vance.

The U.S. mutual fund market remained broadly flat in the first quarter of 2005, while European cross-border UCITS fund assets rose by 5.1 percent, an Aug. 17 Reuters report indicated.

According to new figures from the Investment Company Institute, worldwide mutual fund assets for the first quarter of 2005 were $16.3 trillion, or about the same level they were last year.

A subsidiary of Charles Schwab has introduced a managed account platform for independent advisers.

Schroders earned $567.8 million in asset management total revenues through the six months ended June 30, a whopping 28% from $444.4 million in the first half of 2004. The increase is a further improvement in gross margins, as both retail and high-margin institutional businesses drove profits, Schroders reported.

The nation's fund managers are bullish about the prospects for the global economy, according to a poll released yesterday by Merrill Lynch.

Fidelity Investments has partnered with several Wall Street firms, including Citigroup, Credit Suisse First Boston and Lehman Brothers, to revamp the Boston Stock Exchange, turning the 170-year-old mart into an electronic network rivaling the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, Boston Globe reports this morning.

The NASD, increasingly concerned that brokers may be wrongfully selling or using hedge funds for their professional clients, is now investigating hedge funds.

In an effort to enhance bond and money market mutual fund product lines for individual investors, Boston-based Fidelity Investments is on the move to make them more accessible to individual investors.

Looking across the Web sites of 15 different 529 offerings from a variety of brokerage firms, a new study from Corporate Insight finds that both product pricing and information is difficult to find and nearly impossible to compare. Some sites had out-of-date information and even customer service representatives who didn't acknowledge the existence of a 529 plan.

The latest news out of Washington has President Bush's top Social Security adviser playing to Democrats in the hopes that the administration can slip its controversial private accounts into the program's reform plan.

The New York Stock Exchange has ordered Merrill Lynch Pierce Fenner & Smith to pay a $10 million fine for a failure to deliver prospectuses to customers in mutual fund transactions and other supervisory and operational lapses, according to an Aug. report from Dow Jones.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged four brokers and a day trader for improperly using a squawk box, the internal Wall Street communications system.