Special Program Root Tag

The Bush Administration is not likely to pass the bold retirement savings proposal that it hoped would redefine the ways investors could save for retirement and other goals. A far more modest proposal is gaining ground in Congress that would simply lift the contribution ceilings within the current system, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Mellon Financial has agreed to buy Arden Group, an investment management firm that focuses on institutions and wealthy individuals, Mellon announced Monday. Terms were not disclosed.

Hedge funds, which have long relished their reputations as aggressive traders, are now turning to safer strategies because, in these volatile market conditions, their investors are demanding it.

Mutual fund giants wanting to go after ethnic niches could take a number of lessons from community banks that have thrived for years in this area: Speak to them in their own language, in their own communities.

As Mutual Fund Market News reported last summer, Morningstar is giving its fund categories a facelift.

Speculation that the Federal Reserve might be constrained in cutting U.S. interest rates much further below 1.25% because of the damage it could do to money market mutual funds greatly overstates the cases, according to Lehman Brothers, The Wall Street Journal reports.

HealthSouth Corp.’s alleged accounting fraud is causing pains in mutual funds with the biggest holdings, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Fidelity Forms Separate Institutional Divisions

PALM DESERT, Calif. - The mutual fund industry is entering a "new era of accountability" and should prepare to take a leadership role in restoring investor confidence.

For fund companies seeking to reach out to minority markets, particularly Hispanics or Asian-Americans, language barriers always present a formidable challenge.

Ethnic marketing has replaced equity underwriting, private equity investing and corporate lending as the hot business line in U.S. commercial banking. With assets down at mutual fund companies and the investment holdings of Hispanics, Asian-Americans and African-Americans expected to grow to $3.2 trillion by 2007 from $1.9 trillion today, it might pay the mutual fund industry to take note of minority investors.

Jyoti Chopra is director of the multicultural and diversified business development group at Merrill Lynch, responsible for strategic planning, community leadership and relationship development among the U.S. South Asian market. This market includes immigrants and people of descent from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and other bordering nations. Prior to Merrill, Chopra was a writer and media consultant covering human development and issues affecting women and children at the United Nations.

Mutual fund giants wanting to go after ethnic niches could take a number of lessons from community banks that have thrived for years in this area: Speak to them in their own language, in their own communities.

African-American-owned businesses take in some $70 billion in revenue in a year, but are statistically invisible, according to Keith Green, ING's senior vice president for domestic emerging markets.

Black Diamond Asset Management (BDAM) has hired John Hausladen and Stephen Slack as managing directors. Both will be responsible for wholesale sales and support of key broker/dealers in certain U.S. regions.

Lincoln National Convertible Securities Fund has appointed Damon J. Andres as the fund's new portfolio manager.

UBS Global Asset Management has appointed Lyndsey Pilling as the U.K. director of consultant relationships.

Putnam Investments has hired a new head of global stock research, Joshua Brooks, in another effort to reinvigorate its once-hot stock funds.

NEW YORK - "Remorse and disgrace" rather than "hubris" is what is driving the investment management M&A business, Donald Putnam, CEO and managing director of Putnam Lovell NBF Securities, told executives gathered for The Money Management Institute's annual convention here.

John Thornton, co-COO and president of Goldman Sachs Group will retire on July 1 to become a professor at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.