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Mutual fund research giant Lipper said Tuesday that it had purchased a rival, London-based Fitzrovia International, for an undisclosed amount of money.

Jeffrey Greenberg, who had run insurance giant Marsh & McLennan since 1999, resigned Monday, less than two weeks after his firm was charged with bid-rigging.

For its one-year-old Chinese mutual fund venture, ABN AMRO has set its sights on tripling its assets by the end of next year, an executive said Monday.

San Francisco-based HighMark Funds has launched three asset allocation funds that it said would offer a low-risk, high-reward investment, and make it easier for financial advisers to manage client assets.

The NASD fined Citigroup Global Markets $250,000 for distributing inappropriate hedge fund sales literature, the regulatory agency said on Monday. The penalty marks the agency’s heftiest fine for abusive hedge fund sales practices by broker/dealers.

The Securities and Exchange Commission fears that investment companies may have paid retirement-plan consultants in order to steer business their way, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Famed bond guru Bill Gross, head of the $400 billion PIMCO bond operation, finally got his wish.

Many providers of separately managed accounts are beginning to pitch their wares to 401(k) sponsors, touting their personalization as a way of boosting participation and savings rates. Don Salama, managing director of marketing and sales at NYLIM Retirement Plan Services, a division of New York Life Investment Management, noted that even though many 401(k)s offer online independent investment advice, only about 5% of participants use it. As a result, 401(k)s are underutilized, do-it-yourself vehicles--"a crisis in the making," he said.

Who says there is no such thing as a free lunch? While regulators are pushing to clean up the fund industry, some short-term shareholders are continuing to eat away at returns of other investors by driving up costs and benefiting from an inefficient system.

Marsh & McLennan is under the regulatory gun again, and although the new probe is not related to business at its mutual fund unit, Putnam Investments is sure to suffer some fallout, industry experts say.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating FMI Mutual Funds for possible improper trading practices, the company indicated in a regulatory filing. FMI disclosed that the Commission has opened an informal probe into a 2002 security trade by the former employer of an FMI principal. The principal and former employer were not identified, but the manager of the FMI-affiliated Cortina Funds, Cortina Asset Management, is the sub-adviser in question.

NEW YORK - With roughly $600 billion in assets under management, the separately managed account business continues to grow exponentially as members of the adviser community become more and more comfortable with how these nuanced investment vehicles work.

Brokerage firm A.G. Edwards announced that the Justice Department is looking into possible improper trades at the company. While the brokerage firm did not go into specifics or indicate whether it has been subpoenaed, it did admit that it could face some regulatory action for "timing transactions."

A.G. Edwards indicated in an SEC filing that it expects its revenue to decline as a result of the ban on directed brokerage by mutual fund companies. The firm did not disclose, however, how much of a decline it expects, although it did say that in combination with other regulations, the changes could have "significant and adverse" effects.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has subpoenaed Gabelli Asset Management for possible improper trading, the company indicated in an SEC filing. Last October, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed a subpoena against Gabelli, which admitted that one client had market-timing arrangements.

Keefe, Finucane Return To John Hancock Funds

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Saving for college in the state of Nevada just got a little cheaper.

A federal appeals court has denied a request by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to delay new rules requiring mutual funds to have independent chairmen. The world's largest business group had launched a campaign to postpone more stringent governance measures adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission this past summer pending the outcome of its lawsuit challenging the move.

After posting average annual returns of 21% for the past 10 years, compared to 9% by the S&P 500, returns of publicly-traded mutual fund companies are going to slow considerably, CBSMarketWatch reports, citing a report by UBS analyst Glenn Schorr.