Fund performance

CHICAGO -- Weekly reporting municipal bond mutual funds had a net inflow of $815 million during the period ending May 21, AMG Data Services reported.

We were rather startled when we read as a sidenote in a story on money market mutual fund flows in The Wall Street Journal the other day that Financial Research Corp., the go-to source for industry- and firm-wide sales data, would no longer be publishing its figures.

ING Names Brown Retail Annuity President

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted unanimously last Wednesday on a proposal that would require mutual funds to provide risk/return, fee and strategy information using the same new digital data tagging system as the 500 largest U.S. corporations.

Talk about tapping into the powers that be inside the Beltway.

PHILADELPHIA - Boards may have grown in power since the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, but mutual fund companies should take care to temper that influence so it doesn't interfere with business.

The information technology sector has surpassed financials as the largest sector in the S&P 500 index for the first time since early 2002, Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst for Standard & Poor’s, told BusinessWeek.com.

Nuveen Investments Inc. is developing a debt instrument to allow the refinancing of billions of dollars in frozen auction-rate securities.

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted unanimously yesterday on a proposal that would require mutual funds to provide risk/return, fee and strategy information using the same new digital data tagging system as the 500 largest U.S. corporations.

WASHINGTON — Market participants hailed yesterday’s long-awaited but widely expected Supreme Court decision that upheld 42 states’ preferential tax treatment of their bonds as a “resounding victory” for the municipal securities market.

The nearly $80 billion that was pulled from money market funds in April was the highest monthly total in 16 years.

Direxion Funds of New York and Boston hopes to break new ground for itself as well as the leveraged ETF marketplace.

WASHINGTON - Exchange traded funds (ETFs) have been growing by leaps and bounds lately, but you ain't seen nothin' yet, said a panel of executives involved in creating and distributing ETFs, speaking at the Investment Company Institute's general membership meeting here two weeks ago.

The mood at the Investment Company Institute's 50th Annual General Membership Meeting in Washington, D.C., earlier this month, themed "Our Foundations, Our Future," was markedly upbeat. Certainly, this is welcome and refreshing, especially following the dot-com crash of 2000-2001, the mutual fund scandals of 2003-2005 and this year's subprime credit crisis hitting the financial services industry and Wall Street, in particular, so hard.

WASHINGTON - The general consensus among financial experts is that target-date funds are better suited for the majority of 401(k) investors than money market funds. Only problem is, the passive participant seems to have little interest in making changes to their plan, especially if they were automatically enrolled into it.

Until recently, getting a guaranteed income in retirement meant buying an annuity.

AXA Distributors, LLC has appointed Joanne Pietrini-Smith as chief operating officer of AXA Partners, its life insurance business.

U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management has announced four appointments in Boston, in the latest of nearly 20 additions to the New England area in the last nine months.

A lawsuit by the Securities and Exchange Commission alleges that more than 30 firms spent in excess of $3 million over the course of three years to lure the business of Boston mutual fund giant Fidelity Investments.

Including lift-outs and partial deals, investment firms have shelled out more than $50 billion so far this year to acquire mutual fund companies and other asset management firms, in a record 241 deals this year, according to Jefferies Putnam Lovell, a division of Jefferies.