Fund performance

Northern Trust Global Investments has been named the Investment Management Firm of the Year at ACQ Finance Magazine's third-annual awards ceremony.

Hedge funds may have to change tactics, notably by cutting their leverage, and adapt to regulations that likely will restrict their investment strategies, according to a recent report about the $2 trillion alternative asset management industry published by Standard & Poor’s.

John Hancock Funds has launched the Technical Opportunities Fund, a diversified stock fund that is structured to allow the subadviser, Wellington Management, to invest up to 100% of the portfolio in cash if necessary. The fund is intended to provide a specialty strategy for retail portfolios.

Edward Jones has adopted Delta Data's FUNDViews service to manage and maintain operational rule changes within its mutual fund security master tables in its brokerage platform.

UMB Financial Corp. is installing Advantage Fee software from Fiserv Inc. to streamline billing activities in its investment management units, Fiserv said.

A former UBS banker who cooperated with the U.S. investigation of the Swiss bank was sentenced to over three years in jail for helping a billionaire real estate developer evade $7.2 million in taxes.

Fidelity Investment's timely staff cuts and careful positioning of its financial service units is paying off this year and contributing to market share gains, according to the fund giant.

Sales and national accounts professionals saw average compensation losses ranging from 10% to 30% in 2008, but with smart management, top producers will be well-positioned for a recovery in 2010, according to a new study by kasina.

Wall Street's M&A business for asset management companies will be fueled by strategic expansion purchases and corporate divestitures over the coming year, according to a new survey by Jefferies Putnam Lovell.

Investors who have a more optimistic outlook appear to be better prepared for retirement, Fidelity said. Eighty-three percent of optimists are more likely to expect a comfortable lifestyle in retirement, versus 61% of pessimists.

Mutual fund investors overcame gloomy indices in July and put a lot of money into domestic and overseas equity mutual funds, giving them record gains by several measures, according to Lipper’s Fund Flows Insight Report released on Wednesday.

Fidelity Investments said its assets under management have grown 9% since the end of 2008 to $1.4 trillion and that combining assets administered, it oversees $2.8 trillion, up 9% in that time.

High-yield bond funds have returned an outstanding 33% year-to-date and attracted $14.6 billion in assets, TheStreet.com reports. And for the 10 years through the end of July, high-yield bonds gained 2.9% annually, compared with the 2.2% loss in the S&P 500 Index.

Mutual funds that focus on a select sector or small number of stocks are outperforming more broadly based portfolios, The Wall Street Journal reports. These funds rely on in-depth research to invest in only a couple dozen of stocks, rather than the average 172. Thus, they are riskier—but have the potential for outsized returns.

Affiliated Computer Services has joined the growing list of service providers offering 401(k) analytic tools for plan sponsors.

Actively Managed Funds Up 15.82%, Beating S&P by Five Percentage Points

Hedge funds delivered an average of 2.5% in July and are up 9.9% year-to-date, the best performance in 11 years, according to the Credit Suisse/Tremont Hedge Fund Index.

With mortgage-backed securities regaining value, PIMCO’s benchmark $169 billion Total Return Fund has been trimming its exposure to this sector, Dow Jones reports. The fund’s holdings of mortgage-backed securities fell to 47% in July, only slightly more than its 42% exposure in April 2007, and down considerably from a peak of 86% in February.

Money market mutual fund assets fell $12.83 billion in the week ended Aug. 12, with the bulk of the redemptions coming from retail investors, the Investment Company Institute said.

As employers regain confidence, they plan to lift freezes on salaries, benefits and 401(k) matches, according to a series of reports.