Subject Root Tag

Earlier this week, John Templeton sadly passed away at the age of 95. Templeton created the Templeton Growth Fund back in 1954, but many articles about his passing avoided this subject when they summarized his life.

With the beginning of a new fiscal quarter this month, many hoped for an end to the credit crisis that has plagued the market thus far this year. Yet these hopes have been disbanded as threats of further losses throughout financial institutions, concerns of inflation, and record high oil prices continue to persist.

According to data firm Hedge Fund Research, the $2 trillion hedge fund industry has been hit hard by the credit crisis.More funds have left the industry, and fewer have entered, over the past six months than collectively last year.

A source for the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) recently stated that the CSRC only suggested that senior mutual fund officials remain in China until the Olympics in early August to keep a stable market, they are in no which way barring them from leaving the country.

The money management unit of Wachovia Corporation, Evergreen Investments, announced Tuesday that its Chief Executive Dennis Ferro is set to retire at the end of this year. Ferro has been with the firm for five years and confirms that the status of the market and of Evergreen, in general, has had no impact on his retirement, which has been in the talks for over a year. Succeeding him will be Peter Cieszko, who is currently head of global distribution and has been with Evergreen since July 2006.

Vanguard has transferred 34 of its 38 exchange-traded funds to the NYSE Arca from the American Stock Exchange. This is a result of the merger between Amex and NYSE EuroNet, the holding company for NYSE Arca. The other four ETFs, Vanguard® Mega Cap 300 ETF, Vanguard Mega Cap 300 Growth ETF, Vanguard Mega Cap 300 Value ETF and Vanguard Total World Stock ETF, are already traded on the NYSE Arca.

In a report released yesterday on what went wrong at the ratings agencies responsible for grading instruments tied to subprime debt, the Securities and Exchange Commission found a breakdown in communications.

Most individuals are not saving enough for retirement because they are not compensating for rising medical costs, lengthening life spans, and the declining availability of pension and retiree medical benefits, according to a study by Hewitt Associates.

Sir John Templeton, founder of the Templeton Funds and who first came to Wall Street in 1937, passed away yesterday at the age of 95 from pneumonia in Nassau, Bahamas.

Absolute Return magazine reports that only 35 new hedge funds have been launched in the first half of this year, down markedly from 72 funds in the first half of 2007. But this year, those new funds have raised $19.5 billion, up 39% in total assets under management at the outset from the $14 billion the new funds raised last year.

Daniel Petrozzo has been named new chief information officer at Fidelity Investments, and Ronald E. DePoalo is now CIO of the firm’s institutional products division.

Three high-profile staff members at the Investment Company Institute have already left or are planning on leaving the mutual fund lobbying group in the near future, Defined Contributions & Savings Plan Alert reports.

If it isn’t enough that federal regulators are looking into whether the managers of two failed Bear Stearns hedge funds, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, misled investors into staying with the risky investments as they were tanking, they are now probing whether they inflated the funds’ returns and outlook to obtain loans from banks or prime custodians, BusinessWeek reports.

The Alternative Investment Management Association of the U.K. is about to launch a third set of codes for hedge funds-of-funds, on the heels of two other sets of best practices issued in the last 18 months.

Chrisopher Hohn, who runs the $15billion hedge fund The Children’s Investment Fund Management in the U.K.—and who is practically revered for the average annual returns of 42% he has delivered since the fund’s inception in 2004—has reached an impasse, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Thanks to Fidelity Investments, students from Mattahunt Elementary School of Mattapan, Mass., that are part of the BELL (Building Educated Leaders for Life) program will learn how to trade and analyze stocks and bonds this summer.

Baby Boomers now comprise half to three-quarters of the clients of fee-based advisers and independent reps, a new wealth report found. Understanding the changing composition of the American consumer can go a long way toward establishing a healthy business model. However, if that model is focused solely on affluent households, the pickings are growing slimmer.

Morningstar's Investor Conference in Chicago may have echoed with many of the same old solutions of the past, but for those who listened carefully to Mohamed El-Erian's message, "This time it's different."

In November of last year, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a rule to decrease the prospectuses of mutual fund firms to summaries of around three pages that could be accessed online, Mortgage Banking reports. According to a report produced by research firm Aite Group, if this rule takes effect, the financial services industry stands to save more than $65 million per year in printing and postage in addition to rescuing 42,000 trees annually.

In light of Legg Mason's recent struggles and dropping stock price, the company has slashed the pay of CEO Mark Fetting and its founder Raymond "Chip" Mason.