Investment funds

Global banks, forced by regulators to reduce their dependence on profits from high-risk trading, have rediscovered the appeal of the mundane business of managing money for clients.

Global exchange-traded fund and exchange-traded product assets reached an all-time high of $1.9 trillion at the end of November 2012, according to figures from ETFGI’s monthly global ETF and ETP industry insights.

A new report from mutual fund research firm Strategic Insight offers non-U.S. asset managers insights designed to help them enter the U.S. market and succeed.

For the week ended Nov. 28, investors pulled an estimated $481 million from U.S. equity funds, a fraction of the $7.5 billion withdrawn a week earlier and the smallest weekly outflow since mid-July.

Montage Investments has added Giralda Advisors and the Giralda Fund to its fund family.

Compass EMP Funds is moving its three multi-asset class funds to a new trust.

Huntington Bank has named Gregory Forbes as Senior Vice President for business development for Huntington Asset Services. Forbes will focus on expanding market share in servicing larger fund companies and institutional clients.

Cambiar Investors, LLC is giving investors early Christmas gifts this year.

The Litman Gregory Masters Smaller Companies Fund has made a roster change.

IndexIQ has announced today that it plans to close the IQ Emerging Markets Mid Cap ETF.

BlackRock’s latest November 2012 ETP Landscape Report paints a rosy picture for exchange-traded products heading into the New Year.

OppenheimerFunds today officially closed the book on its acquisition of SteelPath Capital Management and SteelPath Fund Advisors.

Gemini Fund Services has announced that its Two Roads Shared Trust, which launched in April, will soon include alternative mutual funds from Alternative Road Investment Advisers, Belvedere Asset Management, and LJM Funds Management.

Phoenix -- David Blitzer, managing director, S&P 500 Dow Jones Indices, took home the lifetime achievement award at The William Sharpe Indexing Achievement Awards Ceremony held today at IMN’s newly-named Global Indexing & ETFs conference (formerly the Super Bowl of Indexing Conference) in sunny Phoenix, AZ.

The NASDAQ OMX Group has launched the NASDAQ Global Index Family, which represents more than 98% of the global equity investable marketplace and will result in the development of 24,000 indexes.

MountainView Securities, a broker/dealer focused on the fixed income markets, has hired Amber Lindsay as Managing Director of Fixed Income Sales.

For the better part of two years, Mary Schapiro told anyone who would listen that the federal government could not afford another bailout and that the money market mutual fund industry would have to backstop itself.

Ben Johnson, who has led Morningstar’s passive fund research in Europe and Asia, has been named director of passive fund research globally.

Think you've got your target-date planning down pat? Think again.

Looks like the "ETF fee war" is waging on.