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Franklin Templeton Investments said Jim Baio has been named financial chief of Franklin Resources and Jennifer Bolt is the new chief information officer of the unit. Both moves are effective May 15 and Baio and Bolt have been named senior vice presidents of the firm.

State Street Corp. of Boston announced Tuesday that it has been awarded two contracts to provide custodian and administration services for Scudder Investments and Aon Asset Management.

Investment guru Warren Buffet warned investors that the time to buy into corporate junk bonds had passed, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Over 90% of broker-dealers are planning on hiring retail brokers within the coming year, and none are in a complete hiring freeze, according to a study by BrokerHunter.com. Analysts, on the other hand are much less in demand, with only 5.6% of firms hiring and less than a quarter looking to add sales assistants.

The Financial Communications Society has announced the finalists for its annual best advertising contest and many of the candidates are mutual fund companies.

The Charles Schwab Corp. has announced multifaceted organizational changes, designed to "better match the way the company interacts with client segments and organizes and manages its products and services."

Morningstar announced Monday it will unveil 11 new mutual fund categories as part of a series of upgrades to the company’s investment methodology.

Wasatch Funds said it is launching the Wasatch Micro Cap Value Fund in late July. Initially, Wasatch plans to close the Micro Cap Value Fund to new investors at approximately $20 million in assets. The minimum initial investment in the Fund is $5,000 with a maximum contribution of $500,000.

Over the next five years, 500,000 jobs at American financial services firms will move overseas, according to a study by A.T. Kearney. Eight percent of the workforce will lose their jobs to offshore locations at mutual funds, banks, brokerages, and insurers. Companies anticipate saving $30 billion annually as job relocations begin to involve increasingly sophisticated positions within companies.

Equity index annuities (EIA) are complex and hard to explain, but investors may respond to one thing: these products have outperformed between 63% and 75% of mutual funds, according to a report from the Advantage Group. The analysis compares indexes of five different types of EIAs to performance data from Morningstar and Lipper for 2344 mutual funds. EIAs do not reinvest dividends, where mutual funds do.

Investment guru Warren Buffett warned investors that the time to buy into corporate junk bonds had passed, reports the Los Angeles Times.

Boston Private Financial Holdings said it has agreed to by an 80% stake in money manager Dalton, Greiner, Hartman, Maher & Co. for about $75 million, according to Reuters.

Pyxis Consulting said it has released iEnroll 529 version 4.0, which provides 529 plan managers with several online tools, techniques and services to drive enrollment and increase assets under management.

Despite 1.6 million new accounts and more than $10 billion in new assets under management in 529 college savings plans last year, providers have been disappointed with the performance of the individual plans according to a recent report by Cerulli Associates of Boston.

Junk bonds' strong rebound stimulates the junk bond fund sector, which brought in $1.1 billion in the week ended April 30, according to AMG Data Services. That marks the 10th week in a row of net inflows, Reuters reports. A declining default rate has helped junk bonds' rally since last October. Total inflows into the junk bond mutual fund sector this year has amounted to almost $14.7 billion.

Socially responsible mutual fund group, the Ave Maria Mutual Funds announced it has launched two new funds. The company, which invests according to Roman Catholic beliefs, said it is now offering a bond fund and a growth-oriented stock portfolio. These will join the Ave Maria Catholic Values Fund, an equities fund that has assets of around $100 million and launched nearly two years ago.

Janus Capital Group Inc. has moved to expand its Asian distribution by signing an agreement to offer its funds through 30 Taiwan banks. The move comes as its assets under management fell again in the first quarter.

Launching what it is calling a pre-emptive strike against arbitrage traders, Vanguard of Valley Forge, Pa., announced plans to charge these opportunists a 2% redemption fee on the sale of shares held less than two months on nine of its international equity funds.

Fear and loathing of lost wages and dramatically depressed stock prices have young investors losing sight of their retirement goals.

Delaware Investments of Philadelphia and Linsco/Private Ledger (LPL Financial) of San Diego and Boston have wrapped up the details of an agreement to partner for a brand new mutual fund wrap program that will launch in September with a $15,000 account minimum.