Investment funds

The Securities and Exchange Commission is expanding its New York office staff of 360 people by 33, or nearly 9%, in an effort to better regulate hedge funds and brokerages. The SEC will hire 18 additional people in enforcement and 15 in examinations.

Wealthy investors will continue to be careful with their money, Schwab found in a survey of 1,100 independent advisers with more than $252 billion in assets under management, the latest installment in its semi-annual Independent Advisor Outlook Study.

American Beacon Advisors has launched the American Beacon Global Real Estate Fund, which aims to deliver high total return through a combination of current income and capital appreciation and which will be sub-advised by CB Richard Ellis Global Real Estate Securities.

Warburg Pincus will invest $230 million in Primerica, the mutual fund and life insurance sales unit of Citigroup, in return for a 23% stake, filings show.

AdvisorShares and Peritus Asset Management have just filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to offer the Peritus High Yield ETF, an exchange-traded fund that will invest in senior and subordinated corporate debt and loans across various industries and maturities with the goal of delivering both capital appreciation and high current income.

ProShares is planning to offer four international sector and three U.S. regional banking exchange-traded funds, which will bring its stable of ETF offerings to 99.

Direxion has launched a pair of long and short exchange-traded funds linked to the performance of short-term U.S. Treasuries, the Direxion Daily 2-Year Treasury Bull 3x Shares and the Direxion Daily 2-Year Treasury Bear 3x Shares. The funds are linked to the one-security NYSE Current 2-Year U.S. Treasury Index.

Ten of Vanguard’s index funds and corresponding exchange-traded fund share classes are now linked to updated MSCI 25/50 sector indexes that have expanded their concentration of holdings to comply with IRS diversification rules.

Direxion, in conjunction with sub-advisor IPOX Capital Management, has launched the Direxion Long/Short Global IPO fund, which will provide retail investors with institutional-style access to investment opportunities in the global initial public offering and spin-off market. The long portion of the portfolio will invest in promising IPOs one year old or less, and the short portion will seek out stocks in their second to fourth year that are expected to underperform.

529 college savings plans have attracted $100 billion in 11 million accounts, roughly a quarter of the money parents in the U.S. have set aside for their child’s education. But that’s far short of the hundreds of billions of dollars asset management firms expected them to attract.

Total assets in exchange-traded funds fell 5.8%, or $45 billion, in January from a month earlier, according to monthly data from State Street.

Mutual funds brought in $377 billion in assets last year, while exchange-traded funds attracted $104.1 billion and separately managed accounts garnered $80 billion, according to Morningstar’s Fund Flows and Investment Trends 2009 Annual Report.

Citigroup has hired Sanjiv Sawhney as global head of fund services, a new position. He was previously head of fund services operations at JP Morgan and is returning to Citi, where he began his career and served for 15 years.

Being owned by a bank has handcuffed many mutual fund units. Just don’t tell that to JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s J.P. Morgan Funds.

Natixis Global Associates, in conjunction with Absolute Asia Asset Management, has launched the Absolute Asia Dynamic Equity Fund, a multi-cap fund that will invest in Asian companies, ex-Japan. It is the first fund offered in the United States by the Singapore-based Absolute Asia management team, which has been headquartered in the region for more than a decade.

The law firm of Berman DeValerio has filed a class-action lawsuit against broker/dealer PrimeVest Financial Services and two of its subsidiaries for allegedly overcharging investors nearly $5,000 in sales charges on Class A mutual funds by failing to apply sales breakpoint discounts.

Combined assets in the nation's mutual funds decreased by $234.5 billion, or 2.1% to $10.886 trillion in January, according to a survey by the Investment Company Institute.

If the U.S. mutual fund industry would like a clearer picture of what would happen to sales if fees—particularly up-front, sales load, 12b-1 or 401(k) fees—were disclosed, it need only take a look at the disastrous results in India.

Privately held Fidelity Investments 2009 annual report indicated a 5% increase in operating profit to $2.51 billion, up from $2.39 billion in 2008, excluding interest expenses and taxes.

The International Organization of Securities Commissions, of which the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.K. Financial Services Authority are members, starting in September will ask hedge funds to provide high-level, bi-annual snapshots of: their stock and bond holdings, geographic and underlying currency exposure, leverage levels, sales and redemptions, investor classifications, primary marketing channels, recent performance, and operations and technology details, including turnover, clearing mechanisms and risk measures.