Julius Baer Americas, a subsidiary of the Swiss wealth manager Julius Baer Holding Ltd., has changed its name to Artio Global Investors Inc.

In a conference call Thursday morning, Boston-based Putnam Investments announced that Robert L. "Bob" Reynolds will succeed Charles E. "Ed" Haldeman to become the firm's president and chief executive officer. Haldeman plans to stay on board and will take on a new role as the chairman of Putnam Investment Management, LLC.

NEW YORK – Timothy Geithner, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, called for substantial reforms to the structure of the regulatory system of the U.S.

Wachovia Corp. says its retail retirement group is drawing assets by having advisers work face to face with customers at every income level to create a retirement plan.

On Thursday, San Francisco’s Forward Management LLC unveiled its latest plan to acquire Seattle’s Accessor Capital Management LLC.

Despite strict guidelines and barriers within China, which tend to turn off global fund houses from conducting business, Fidelity International recently announced that it is ready and willing to pursue joint ventures there sometime in the near future.

Wachovia Corp. plans to phase out the 121-year-old A.G. Edwards name, sacrificing a strong brand for a stronger one.

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.

WASHINGTON - The credit crisis is 75% to 85% unwound in terms of the financial markets, but the economy may still be on shaky ground, Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase told the 1,500 delegates assembled here for the Investment Company Institute’s 50th GMM.“I would say this thing has largely already worked its way through. It probably won’t get worse at this point. Increased capital requirements will take about six months longer” to bring markets and counter-party risk tolerance back to normalcy, Dimon said.However, he was quick to add: “The recession, I don’t know. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, it’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”Markets perform in cycles, Dimon reminded executives, listing the 2001 technology bubble, Long Term Capital Management’s overleveraged exposure to Russia in 1997, the real estate and savings and loan crisis of 1990, overvalued earnings in 1987 and the subsequent stock market crash, the recession of 1982 and the oil shortages in 1974.
“The difference in this one is it’s a housing crisis,” said Dimon, who included among those to blame for the subprime crisis those mortgage bankers who failed to properly verify borrowers’ income or appraisers’ real estate assessments.Dimon also praised the government for its swift action in bailing out Bear Stearns and a cadre of more than 1,000 investment bankers at his own firm who, after he got “the Thursday telephone call” about whether or not to purchase the ailing firm, spent the entire weekend performing due diligence on the deal.In answer to a question from an audience member, Dimon exhorted mutual fund executives to continue to bring innovative products to market but to be extremely cautious when doing so.As an example, Dimon said, collateralized debt obligations, CDO warehouses and structured investment vehicles that invested in subprime mortgages are so complex that to try to assess the price in one such instrument, JPMorgan ran a Monte Carlo simulation on one of its mainframe computers for seven hours.Questionable mark-to-market policies also factored into the subprime troubles, he added. But that said, Dimon said he is tired of being “vilified” by the media for bailing out Bear Stearns or operating a bank that itself sold subprime mortgages and products derived from them. And as to banks’ role in making credit and loans too available to the American public, Dimon stressed that the consumers of subprime CDOs and other structured products over the past two years, have largely been institutional and not retail investors.The ICI booked Dimon’s appearance many months ahead of JPMorgan’s recent preeminent role in partnering with the government on the Bear Stearns deal, noted Edward Bernard, chairman of the ICI’s General Membership Meeting Planning Committee, and vice chairman of T. Rowe Price Group.“We thank Mr. Dimon for honoring his commitment” at this exceptionally busy time, Bernard said.

On the heels of its $328 million loss in the first quarter, down from a $81 million profit in the first quarter of 2008, American Airlines' parent company, AMR Corp., Fort Worth, Tex., announced on Wednesday it is unloading 90% of its American Beacon Advisors investment management unit for $480 million in cash.

The global credit crisis remains a significant threat to economic growth, despite recent improvement, according to the International Monetary Fund.

While those at Bear Stearns who've lost their positions are flooding Wall Street with resumes daily, federal data for the finance jobs in NYC for the 12 months through February paint a picture of an industry faring not too badly.

Since the March 16 buyout of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan Chase, Morgan scouts have been “all over” Bear’s staff, looking for the best and brightest members.

Nationwide Financial Service Inc. has received an offer from its parent company Nationwide Mutual to buy its publicly held shares for $2.2 billion.

The wealth management unit of Citigroup Inc. has agreed to buy Legg Mason Inc.’s managed account trading and technology operations.

Insured Bond Funds Quietly Outperform

The New York Stock Exchange said it will buy cross-town rival the American Stock Exchange for $260 million in stock in addition to whatever monies are raised by the sale of the smaller exchange’s headquarters.

By now, most asset management executives have seen the predictions that large-cap growth will be the way to go in 2008. But digging deeper than mere asset class predictions, MME spoke with two industry leaders to tease out nuances of what fund managers can expect this year.

The rapid growth in the exchange-traded fund arena is increasing the complexity of capital gains taxes, writes the Wall Street Journal.

Details of the sale of BISYS Group of Roseland, N.J., to bank holding company Citigroup of New York for a total of $1.47 billion are intriguing.