Investments

Fidelity Investments this week launched Fidelity WealthCentral, a best-of-breed wealth management platform touted as one that will transform the way advisors conduct business day to day. The platform integrates portfolio management, customer relationship management, financial planning, portfolio rebalancing and trading into one workstation for RIAs, using various technology from Oracle, Advent, Emerging Information Systems and Northfield Information Services.

Fund bonuses will, undoubtedly, be far lower this year, and with that, a number of managers could look to jump ship, Investment News reports.

Given the fact that this year was one of the worst that mutual funds have ever faced, MarketWatch's Chuck Jaffe has some advice for mutual funds that might startle even the most dyed-in-the-wool manager.

Citadel Investment Group is closing its Tokyo office and laying off 12 people there, as well as another 25 in Hong Kong, Reuters reports. Going forward, all of its Asian operations will be run out of the Hong Kong office, which will be left with a staff of between 25 and 30 people.

Existing risk tolerance models have done nothing to help investors with any equity exposure this year, and with so many clients’ assets depleted by the market downturn, advisers are trying to find a new way to assess risk. That was one of the key findings of this year’s Retirement Indicator survey, of 212 financial advisers, sponsored by Brinker Capital.

Moody’s Investors Service has affirmed the long-term A1 senior unsecured debt rating for FMR, parent company of Fidelity Investments. Moody’s said that the broad offerings of FMR—including mutual funds, particularly fixed income and money market funds; brokerage services; and benefits administration—and its strong leadership position in each of these industries, should help it weather the economic meltdown.

Hedge funds returned negative -2.7% in November, bringing their year-to-date decline to 18%, according to the Hennessee Hedge Fund Index, The Wall Street Journal reports. While the decline is painful, it is at least less than the -5.5% loss in October and the double-digit declines in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, the Dow Jones Industrial Index and the Nasdaq.

Fidelity Investments has created a credit card in partnership with American Express that allows customers to transfer rewards from retail purchases to their individual retirement accounts.

Citing steep redemptions and continued market declines, Fidelity Investments Chairman Ned Johnson indicated the firm’s 7% layoffs, or loss of 3,000 jobs, could surge if conditions worsen, the Boston Herald reports.

By overturning a lower court’s dismissal of a case against former Columbia Funds executives James Tambone and Robert Hussey, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is permitting the Securities and Exchange Commission to proceed with its market-timing lawsuit against the two men.

David R. Holst, 43, a mortgage broker in Tucson, Ariz., pleased guilty of fraudulently collecting $350,000 from mutual fund investor clients and recklessly, illegally gambling the money, the Arizona Daily Star reports. He accepted the charges of securities fraud and filing a false income tax return.

Personal financial columns are beginning to warn investors that fund fees could rise in 2009, as mutual fund companies try to grapple with fewer assets under management.

Despite some doomsayers predicting the Dow Jones Industrial Average could fall to 7,000 or lower, most of the speakers at the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit said that the market has probably hit bottom. That said, they don’t see volatility going away anytime soon.

Buttressed by favorable interest rates and investors looking for shelter from falling equity prices, U.S. fixed annuity sales set a new quarterly record. Total U.S. sales of fixed annuities rose to an estimated $27.1 billion for the third quarter, according to a Beacon Research study of 51 insurance companies representing 87% of the market. Sales were up 54% from last year's third quarter, and up 10% from the previous quarter, marking the highest sales since the study began in 2003.

PNC Global Investment Names Wolcott President

Seeing traffic on Yahoo's finance website and Marketwatch.com burgeon, Fidelity Investments has decided to try its hand at financial news for itself by revamping its website.

The Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations at the Securities and Exchange Commission reminded fund companies that with all of the staffing and operational cutbacks taking place, compliance is an area where shortcuts cannot be tolerated.

Fidelity Promoting FDIC-Insured CDs

State Street Corp. will lay off 6% of its workforce, or 1,800 people, in the first quarter. Initially, the layoffs will cost the company as much as $350 million, or 51 cents to 55 cents a share, but that will then revert to $400 million in annual savings.

Neuberger Berman managers have bid for and won the right to buy the asset management business in a court-supervised sale, a source told sister publication Investment Dealers' Digest.