Investments

WASHINGTON — The Senate Agriculture Committee has voted 13 to 8, mostly along party lines, to approve a bill to regulate over-the-counter derivatives. The bill would impose a fiduciary duty on dealers who pitch, advise or enter into swaps with localities, endowment funds, or pension funds.

The country's two largest custody banks said they will keep looking for acquisitions, of whatever size, as they wait for higher interest rates to spur organic growth.

The Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) actions against Goldman Sachs have sent credit default swap spreads spiraling wider not only for Goldman, but for the entire banking sector, according to Fitch Solutions.

The company, known for its socially responsible investing strategy, launched a global water fund in October 2008 that is already paying dividends.

The two funds are focused on current market opportunities in taxable securities and selectively across the fixed income universe.

The German bank has strengthened its emerging-market debt units in Latin America with seven new hires

Former President Bill Clinton now says he had an inadvertent role in the credit crisis and the SEC’s civil fraud case against Goldman Sachs by signing the Commodity Futures Modernization Act in 2000, exempting the $58 trillion credit default swap industry from meaningful regulation.

The U.K.’s Financial Services Authority is finally cracking down on how prime brokers protect client assets.

Bernie Madoff's legacy is still influencing the regulatory community. Fraud is as much a part of Wall Street's history as the closing bell on the New York Stock Exchange, but the Securities and Exchange Commission's recent amendments to its custody rule are intended to make life trickier for any future Madoff.

Despite increasing optimism about the economy, affluent investors remain concerned about retirement savings and the rising costs of healthcare.

Charles Schwab has agreed to settle a federal class-action lawsuit related to its YieldPlus Fund for $200 million, far less than the $800 million plaintiffs had sought.

The most energy-efficient country in the world will become the “gateway to Asia,” Shuhei Abe predicts.

Municipal market dynamics are so favorable right now that investors involved in tender-option bond programs can create better revenue streams compared to what they received before the financial crisis, but at half the risk or less.

NEW YORK—Japan is the most energy-efficient country in the world, using nearly half the energy consumption per GDP of the United States and nearly one-eighth less than India and China, said Shuhei Abe, portfolio manager of the Hennessey Select SPARX Japan Fund.

WASHINGTON — Jafor Iqbal wonders if advisers are from Mars and retirees are from Venus.

XBRL US is working on applications for Apple’s iPhone and newly release iPad. The goal is to demonstrate the power of XBRL in a simple and accessible way, said XBRL US President and Chief Executive Mark Bolgiano.

WASHINGTON — The political pressure to enact financial reform intensified Friday as the government accused Goldman Sachs Group of defrauding investors and the Senate concluded two days of hearings highlighting the allegedly lax supervision that preceded the largest bank failure in the country's history.

For 27 months, investors have consistently favored fixed-income funds, a trend that shows no sign of abating.

Investors pulled $324.4 billion from money market mutual funds in the first quarter, the largest quarterly outflow ever tracked by Morningstar. Approximately $148.2 billion left the funds in March, Morningstar said.

Money market funds are the stepchildren of finance. Though they manage more than $4 trillion in assets, they have not gotten much attention recently. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.)'s regulatory reform proposal does not even mention money market funds, which we believe is a glaring mistake.