Investment funds

Bond funds had estimated inflows of $7.50 billion, compared to estimated inflows of $2.59 billion for the week ended Wednesday, November 7, according to data from the Investment Company Institute.

API Funds has re-upped with Huntington Asset Services through May 2014. API has been a Huntington Asset Services client since 2004.

Investors added $27.7 billion to long-term open-end funds in October, according to data from Morningstar. Taxable-bond funds led the way with inflows of $29.6 billion, while U.S.-stock funds saw outflows of $8.3 billion.

Is Vanguard engaged in a fee war in the mutual fund space? Not according to Vanguard Chairman Bill McNabb.

Charles Fernandez, former president of Florida-based Fairholme Capital Management, has launched the Barnstar Opportunities Fund, a multi-disciplinary, special situations long-bias fund.

Russell Investments is broadening its portfolio and skill sets with the launch of its first internally managed, non-cash retail fund, dubbed the Russell Strategic Call Overwriting Fund.

Investors yanked a record volume of cash from BlackRock Inc.’s exchange-traded fund that buys junk bonds as the notes lose value for the first month since May.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner yesterday urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to pursue new rules for money-market mutual funds, triggering fresh opposition from industry leaders who had beaten back similar proposals and are pursuing a weaker overhaul.

The Investment Company Institute and the chairman of the ICI Money Market Working Group, William McNabb, who is also the chief executive officer of Vanguard, are speaking out against the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s meeting yesterday to discuss money market fund regulation.

Prudential Retirement has strengthened its stable value team with the appointment of Michael Davis as its new head of stable value.

Change is in the air for money market funds and this time it looks like proposed reforms, in whatever form they may take, are going to stick.

The Board of Trustees of the Praxis Core Stock Fund has decided to fold it into the Praxis Growth Index Fund citing poor performance on the part of the Stock fund, according to a recent Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

Invesco Distributors, the US distributor for Invesco Ltd.'s retail mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and institutional money market funds, has launched an iPad app for advisors who work with defined contribution retirement plans.

Robert Hagstrom has joined Legg Mason Investment Counsel as Chief Investment Strategist, responsible for communicating Legg Mason Investment Counsel’s strategies and market views.

Thomson Reuters has launched a benchmarking product to help custodian banks with performance measurement analytics, and Northern Trust has signed up as the first service provider to adopt the indices for its institutional fund servicing clients.

Principal Global Investor has named Mihail Dobrinov head of the emerging market equities team, responsible for the management of $9.3 billion in assets, including portfolio management of the $1.62 billion Principal International Emerging Markets fund and $1.8 billion in Asian regional mandates.

Bruce Bent II, president of the failed $62.5 billion Reserve Primary money-market fund, was found liable for one claim that he negligently violated a securities law while his father was absolved of any liability in a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

New research by the Center for Applied Research, a think tank affiliate of State Street Corporation, is bound to leave a few advisors scratching their heads.

Parametric Portfolio Associates, a Seattle-based subsidiary of Eaton Vance Corp., has agreed to acquire the business of The Clifton Group Investment Management Company, a Minneapolis-based provider of futures- and options-based overlay services and custom risk management products to institutional investors.

Charles Schwab has launched a new site for exchange-traded fund retail investors dubbed the ETF Education Exchange, which aims to “close the knowledge gap in ETFs by aggregating educational content, research and market insights from ETF industry leaders”.