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Forget satisfying lifestyle choices: Many investors will have to adjust their retirement expectations just to secure the necessities, according to a study by Sun Life.

Institutional investors and regulators are paying more attention to the sector.

For investment managers, the capabilities most in demand this year from retirement plans, endowments and foundations will be global and emerging markets investing, hedge funds, private equity and real assets, according to the 2011 Consultant Search Forecast.

“These customers are seeing their parents struggle,” an executive at Fidelity said. “I think that is making it poignant for them; they need to have a bigger focus on savings.”

According to a Russell survey, enthusiasm for non-U.S. equities has declined.

Standard & Poor's said that U.S. corporate dividend increases surged up 27.8% in the first quarter of this year.

The stunning decline in property values across most of the country, a prolonged recession and plain-old negligence and shortsightedness on the part of American workers have all combined to make retirement more a fantasy than a reality for tens of millions of Baby Boomers who are will soon turn 65 years of age.

Nelson Roberts Investment Advisors this week closed its first RIA acquisition, picking up San Francisco Bay Area-based Sylvan H. Kline Jr. Inc. to bring its total assets under management to more than $275 million.

Motivating staff and building relationships lead to success

Tax-exempt money market funds saw only moderate outflows as investors yanked a mere $252.5 million in the week ended April 4, causing total net assets to dip slightly to $319.05 billion, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.

Royal Bank of Canada's troubled U.S. retail bank, reportedly for sale, would be a plausible acquisition for a half-dozen institutions — half of them domestic, the others foreign.

Genworth Financial Wealth Management has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to offer six asset allocation funds that will be sub-advised by Franklin Templeton, Loomis Sayles and State Street Global Advisors.

More and more bank managers are slowly coming around to the fact that thousands of conversations are occurring online every day about their brands, and not surprisingly, many of them aren't very nice.

The Hartford found in a recent survey that 37% of Americans age 45 and older with incomes below $50,000 worry more about rising taxes than those with higher incomes, but are less likely to participate in a 401(k) or other retirement plan that could reduce their taxes. By comparison, 28.5% of those earning $50,000 to $100,000 have such worries, and 32% of those earning more than $100,00 are worried about taxes.

The Conference Board Measure of CEO Confidence rose to 67 in the first quarter, up from 62 in the fourth quarter—showing a measurable amount of faith in the economy since a reading above 50 indicates a positive outlook.

Sub-advised fund assets topped $1.7 trillion in 2010, an all-time high, Financial Research Corp. said.

State Street Global Advisors has launched a new exchange-traded fund based on a corporate bond index weighted according to three quantitative measures: return on assets, interest coverage and current ratio.

Companies paid out $19 billion in dividends in the first quarter of 2011, Standard & Poor’s said. And the number of companies increasing dividends rose 27.8% to 510, up from 399 in the first quarter of 2010.

What portfolio management activities provide the MOST value for your time/money/energy/attention, and which activities provide the LEAST value for your time etc.?