Economy

The tax-exempt market posted a sixth consecutive trading session of gains on Tuesday as demand has outweighed supply in the muni market this week, and prices are following Treasuries higher.

Morgan Stanley and Citigroup have pushed the deadline for determining the fair market value of their Morgan Stanley Smith Barney joint venture to Sept. 10 as they wait for an independent appraisal to help reconcile their opposing values of the business

Ryan Kaufman decided to leave Woodbury, where he has worked since 2009, after the company announced in July that it would be acquired by American International Group. "Given my personal experiences and past dealings with the potential new purchaser, I thought it would be hard for me to go back to my clients and explain that we were re-affiliating with the parent company," he said.

A win for Morgan Stanley in a fight with Citigroup Inc. over the value of their brokerage joint venture could show the firm is playing a losing hand.

GoldenTree Asset Management LP, a money manager overseeing $15.9 billion in assets, hired Daniel Ornstein from Morgan Stanley to co-head its trading business.

Even as Merrill Lynch moved to a $40 million settlement in response to a class action lawsuit this week, some experts ask whether it will be enough to satisfy some several thousand advisors who left the firm following its acquisition by Bank of America.

Merrill Lynch formally agreed to a $40 million settlement to a class action lawsuit brought by two of its former advisors regarding their deferred compensation on Friday, a decision that will potentially impact more than a thousand advisors with production levels of $500,000 and less.

The firm moved Paul Patterson into the position of Deputy Chair, RBC Wealth Management, ultra-high net worth international.

Delaware County Bank & Trust in Lewis Center, Ohio, is the latest bank to add private banking in an effort to court more high-net-worth customers.

Merrill Lynch is expected to head into a New York court Friday and hammer out a settlement that could potentially affect the deferred compensation of thousands of financial advisors that have left the firm since its 2008 combination with Bank of America.

A new online company, FutureAdvisor, aims to break open the market for sophisticated financial advice and make that service available not only to the wealthy, but to all investors. Launched in 2010, the Seattle-based startup says it already analyzes $4 billion in assets for its users and, today, it announced $5 million in new venture capital funding. …

LPL is determined to help advisors up their games in order to be able to serve clients who are generating new wealth or coming into possession of it.

Eric Rosen, the co-head of UBS AG's fixed-income, currencies and commodities business for the Americas, is leaving the bank next month, about a year after he joined, to start a hedge fund.

Proving that it is still in the competition for top advisory talent, Morgan Stanley Smith Barney has tapped competing firms to add nine new financial advisors with more than $1.22 billion in client assets under management to its forces.

Merrill Lynch has hired a two-member advisor team who previously managed more than $1 billion at Wells Fargo's Abbot Downing business.

A review of auditors that examine broker-dealers has unearthed an array of deficiencies in the process the firms use to evaluate their clients, including numerous of infractions that could amount to violations of SEC or FINRA rules.

UBS AG is starting a unit aimed at quantitative hedge funds that combines prime brokerage and services from its direct execution trading business.

Advisor-owned financial services firm HighTower has snapped up a Credit Suisse advisor team with about $1 billion in assets under management, marking the eighth team to move to the firm this year.

More than three in four advisors expect to continue selling variable annuities and allocate 11% of their assets under management toward these products, according to Cogent Research.

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney is cutting its brokerage complexes from 118 to 86 and its non-producing branch managers from about 150 to 85 as it puts its final touches on consolidating two brokerage firms that began several years ago.