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Oppenheimer Asset Management has added the Dividend Performers investment strategy to its separate account consulting program. The strategy is managed by Sovereign Asset Management, a subsidiary of John Hancock Advisers, which was recently bought by Manulife Financial.

General Electric’s initial public offering of its insurance unit, Genworth Financial, got a slow start out of the gate, with its initial price of $19.50 falling below the company estimates of $21 to $23 per share. The company raised only $2.83 billion, half-a-billion less than earlier estimates of $3.34 billion.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is planning to launch enforcement action against Empire Financial Holding Co. and its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Kevin Gagne, Dow Jones Business News reports.

The National Association of Securities Dealers announced the 20 people it has named to its mutual fund task force Thursday. The 20 people, representing a cross-section of the broker/dealer and mutual fund communities, are scheduled to meet for the first time on June 23.

Legg Mason portfolio strategist Bill Miller has targeted forthcoming shares of Google for the Legg Mason Value Trust fund, Reuters reports. The anticipated Google initial public auction has stirred up excitement among institutional investors who value the company's rock-solid brand name. Nonetheless, the pending IPO raises questions about how they will acquire shares that are scheduled to come to market through an unusual Dutch auction process.

An alleged conflict of interest involving an officer in the Massachusetts trial of Prudential Securities brokers has prompted Prudential’s lawyers to ask for the official’s recusal, Reuters reports.

Hedge funds took in $38.2 billion in new assets in the first quarter of the year, marking the fourth consecutive quarter hedge funds have taken in record sums, Tass Research, a division of Tremont Capital Management, reported. This marked a 42.5% increase from the $26.8 billion hedge funds took in during the previous quarter and a whopping 445% increase from the $7 billion they took in during the first quarter of 2003. In the second quarter of last year, they took in $13.8 billion and in the third quarter, $24.6 billion.

The bidding is over for the scandal-tarnished mutual fund firm Strong Financial Corp.

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted Wednesday to require mutual funds to disclose breakpoint discounts in their prospectuses and to adopt codes of ethics. On each measure, the vote was 4-0.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating the "trading practices and procedures" of the respected money management firm Wellington Management, a company spokesperson told the New York Times.

Investors pulled their money from emerging market equity funds at a rapid pace for the fourth consecutive week of outflows, according to EmergingPortfolio.com

Principal Financial Group Tuesday announced it will offer a managed accounts program to 401(k) investors that includes personalized investment advice in partnership with Ibbotson Associates.

Loss of investor confidence continues to weigh on scandal-plagued fund companies, CBSMarketWatch reports. The mutual fund industry reaped a stunning $26 billion in net new assets in stock and bond funds last month, but a handful of asset managers that are linked to market-timing scandals were frozen out of the windfall.

Wells Fargo & Co. is reportedly days away from acquiring Strong Capital Management in a deal valued at $400 to $500 million, CBS MarketWatch reported.

Morningstar plans to introduce a new mutual fund rating system that awards high marks to asset managers that demonstrate good corporate governance tactics, The Wall Street Journal reports.

While 529 plans get all the publicity, Coverdell Education Savings Accounts often offer more advantages to those saving for college, Reuters reports.

Americans have lowered their expectations for retirement and are not actively managing their retirement funds, according to a John Hancock Financial Services survey of 800 defined contribution investors nationwide. The average age at which investors expect to retire is 64.4, up from 61 in Hancock’s last survey in 2002 and 59 in the 1995 poll.

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s office is not a one-man show. Assistant Attorney General David Brown, a former Goldman Sachs lawyer, is Spitzer’s best supporting actor. Think Christopher Walken, only bigger, and with a Harvard law degree.

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer Monday sued to annul the egregious $187.5 million pay deal awarded to former New York Stock Exchange Chairman and CEO Richard Grasso that ignited a scandal which ultimately led to his ouster last year.

Even as the Investment Company Institute at its general membership meeting pored over ways to fix the mutual fund scandal and not let anything like it happen again, investors and executives are already considering the scandal a done deal, according to a column in The St. Paul Pioneer Press Monday.