Investments

The board of directors at The Vanguard Group Inc. has elected F. William McNabb III as its chief executive officer.

Rampart Promotes Two to Managing Director

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examination released a new ComplianceAlert recognizing common flaws and weaknesses among mutual fund companies. The SEC found deficiencies in soft-dollar practices, mutual fund proxies, personal trading by investment advisory employees, valuation and liquidity issues for high-yield municipal bond funds, broker/dealers’ valuation of collateral management processes and a variety of other issues.

The Senate doesn’t like either campaign, each of which ran in the Washington area. TIAA-CREF has since pulled its ads, but Fidelity, claiming all of its communications go through legal review, is still running them.

The Securities and Exchange Commission issued guidance last week for fund boards of directors in assessing their firm’s soft-dollar practices. The SEC said it was issuing the guidance a full two years after the limitations it put on soft dollars in 2006, restricting it only to research, due to rapidly evolving market and trading practices. True enough, there are wide discrepancies among brokerages today, due to rapidly evolving markets, trading practices and electronic crossing networks. Fund companies have until Oct. 1 to comment on the SEC’s guidance.

SEC, Department of Labor Join Forces on 401(k)s

America's new mass affluent blend so effortlessly into society that it's often impossible to tell them apart from a traditional middle class family one day, or from an upper class family the next.

WASHINGTON — The Investment Company Institute last Monday urged the Securities and Exchange Commission to expand its proposed credit rating agency rules on structured products to include municipal securities, and to increase the secondary market disclosure requirements for the municipal market.

NEW YORK - A lot of people are wondering when the U.S. will adopt the same international standards for financial reporting that Europe and the rest of the world seem to be moving toward.

Massachusetts sued Merrill Lynch on July 31 on the charges of fraud and “dishonest and unethical” conduct, Reuters reports.

Assets of money market mutual funds fell by $5.08 billion to rest at $3.502 trillion during the week ending July 30, according to the Investment Company Institute.

U.S. junk bond mutual funds saw net inflows of $153 million in the week ending July 30, according to AMG Data Services.

U.S. Rep. George Miller of California is probably the best friend 401(k) investors have on Capitol Hill.

Despite market opposition, Argentina recently cut tax breaks for mutual funds and financial trusts, satisfying the center-left government promise to raise taxes on financial earnings, Reuters reports.

The managed account solutions industry needs to adopt communications standards, according to a white paper from the Money Management Institute (MMI).

Pax World Management Corporation has settled charges by the Securities and Exchange Commission that two of its funds, Pax World Growth and Pax World High Yield, purchased securities that violated their fund policies.

The energy and commodities sectors have dropped significantly below their 200-day moving averages and are now in sell territory, says Tom Lydon, editor of ETF Trends and president of Global Trends Investment.

Citi has expanded its proprietary managed accounts connectivity hub with CitiConnect, specifically designed for separately managed accounts (SMAs).

India’s booming fund management industry has started to decline as the Indian stock market has plunged nearly a third so far this year, Reuters reports.

One year after one of the hedge fund industry's most talked-about collapses, failed fund manager Jeffrey Larson is raising capital for a new fund.