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Philip L. Kirstein recently came out of a brief retirement to join the investment management practice at Kirkpatrick & Lockhart. Kirstein was previously general counsel and senior vice president for Merrill Lynch Investment Managers.

Financial Research Corp. has hired Laura Van Zandt as director of mutual fund distribution research, a new position in which she is responsible for FRC's mutual fund product line. This entails oversight of existing products and the development of new ones to serve the specific needs of various channels.

Mutual fund companies face an array of competitive challenges in marketing and selling their products. Chief among them is providing service and support to intermediaries who want a convenient way to access client information that is scattered across fund companies. In the past five years, the Internet has become crucial for keeping fund companies' products in the forefront - especially to financial advisers and independent broker/dealers who increasingly rely on account aggregation sites.

More than a decade into the intergenerational transfer of the $10.4 trillion that in 1993 Cornell economists Robert Avery and Michael Rendall forecasted would pass from one generation to the next between 1990 and 2040, financial planners and wealth counselors are detecting a subtle trend. Americans are more willing to talk about their finances, and the rich, in particular, are interested in planners who can help both them and their offspring.

New York State may have changed the way mutual fund companies compete in the 529 college savings plan market.

The downward pressure on 401(k) and other retirement plan balances over the past few years will mean problems for employers - but especially for the millions of workers who are ill-prepared to fund their retirement.

The Independent 529 Plan, a new prepaid college tuition plan managed by TIAA-CREF and run by a consortium of more than 220 private colleges, launched last month. The program, which has been in the works for five years, will market itself primarily as a direct-sold product, but also wants to attract fee-based advisers.

Financial advisers don't always see eye-to-eye with their affluent clients, according to a recent study by Fidelity Investments. The nationwide study, which surveyed 510 affluent investors and 320 advisers, revealed differences in perception over clients' priorities and needs, as well as the most effective means for attracting new clients.

Institutional investment advisors forecast a continued emphasis on diversification - including into mutual funds - and an increasing interest in non-traditional asset classes for the upcoming year.

For years, mutual fund managers have coped with sudden inflows of cash followed by abrupt redemptions, the result of market timers attempting to take advantage of short-term variances between a fund's daily NAV price and the prices of the underlying securities. While some fund companies are intentionally designed to facilitate market timing, most mutual fund firms seek to meet the needs of long-term investors. Volatile flows caused by short-term trading can diminish annual fund returns by more than a percentage point.

Hedge fund values rose 1.52% in September, according to data released Wednesday.

CheckFree Investment Services announced Tuesday that it has added 16 managers to its separately managed account platform in the past past five quarters.

James Connelly, Jr., a former vice chairman for Fred Alger Management , turned himself in to New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer Thursday, Reuters reports. He also pled neither innocent or guilty to a cease-and-desist order from the Securities and Exchange Commission barring him from working at any broker/dealer or investment advisory firm and fining him $400,000. Connelly was expected to plead guilty to ordering employees to destroy documents and e-mails indicating the firm might have allowed late trading, a source told Reuters. The SEC charged him with permitting select investors to market time the Alger funds in exchange for promising to make large deposits in other of the fund complex’s funds.

Employment, capital spending and inventories are the three most important keys to an economic recovery that could be sustained as long as 2010, TheStreet.com reports. If this turns out to be a jobless recovery where the government feels compelled to stimulate the economy further, the recent market run up could be nothing more than a ruse, according to the chief investment strategist at Pinnacle Investment Advisors.

NEW YORK – No software platform for separately managed accounts is without its limitations, speakers said this week at The Money Management Institute’s fall conference here.

The Securities and Exchange Commission might enforce actions against Morgan Stanley for questionable mutual fund practices, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The New York Stock Exchange, as a self-regulated organization, should follow the same rules it makes for its member companies, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William Donaldson told Congress Wednesday, Reuters reports.

The head of mutual funds for Bank One, one of four mutual fund companies named in New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s Sept. 3 fund trading complaint, has lost its head of mutual funds, Reuters reports.

Not only have most large U.S. companies exceeded Wall Street earnings estimates for the third quarter, but they have exceeded them by a wide margin, Reuters reports.

In another sign of an impending economic turnaround, 401(k) investors are returning to stocks in droves, the latest research indicates.