Mutual funds

Wells Fargo's regional president of Florida operations has been promoted to a national executive.

As Gen Xers and Gen Yers put their holey jeans and futons behind them, many financial institutions are trying to lure those newly affluent age groups with high-tech services.

Bloomberg -- Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch unit agreed to pay $160 million to settle a discrimination lawsuit filed by black financial advisors, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said.

The fact that clients don’t always divulge all their personal financial information to their financial advisors comes as no surprise. The questions that need to be answered, however, are: how many clients, what is being withheld and why are they so secretive?

The Securities and Exchange Commission today sanctioned a former portfolio manager at a Boulder, Colo.-based investment advisor for forging documents and misleading the firm’s chief compliance officer to conceal his failure to report personal trades.

BLOOMBERG -- The rate New York state and its local governments pay to the $160.4 billion pension fund will drop for the first time in five years, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said.

As real estate recovers, non-listed REITs are soaring, but they haven’t been much of a hit with customers of Merrill Lynch.

OppenheimerFunds and Putnam Investments are among the winners of the 2013 NOVA Awards, which recognize innovation in the investment management industry.

Visium Asset Management announced the launch of the Visium Event Driven Fund (VIDVX). This is the first mutual fund offering for the alternative asset management firm, which was founded in 2005.

Morgan Stanley has bolstered its New York office with a top billing advisor team from J.P. Morgan Securities, the boutique brokerage branch of JPMorgan Chase.

Bloomberg -- UBS AG, Switzerland’s largest bank, will pay $4.58 million to settle an investigation by regulators into whether its sales assistants were licensed in states where they did business.

OppenheimerFunds today announced the extension of its senior loan investing franchise with the launch of the Oppenheimer Senior Floating Rate Plus Fund (SFR PLUS). This actively-managed fund offers investors access to the same experienced team as the firm's original Senior Floating Rate Fund (SFR).

Best known as the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and the first to head one of its member firms, Muriel F. “Mickie” Siebert died from cancer on August 24 at the age of 80.

A spike in the proportion of RIA-to-RIA deals in the first half of this year may signify that the advisory field is starting to come into its own.

The majority of American workers accept responsibility for financing their own retirement and are relying primarily on their 401(k) to get them there, but many lack the confidence to effectively manage their retirement savings.

These are stressful times for the mutual fund industry. An obvious statement, but one authored by a colleague ten years ago. Even more interesting is that the trends cited then are the same concerns that we hear from clients today. So what has changed?

WASHINGTON — A heavyweight panel including former bank regulator Sheila Bair cautioned Wednesday that the Federal Reserve must take a clear and steady direction out of its "experimental" monetary policies so as not to further harm the economy.

Bloomberg -- U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Jo White said she would push to adopt proposed automated-trading rules after system caused a three- hour halt on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

A software malfunction shut down trading on the NASDAQ for three hours this afternoon, but it was not enough to shake investors.

Bloomberg -- U.S.-registered bond mutual and exchange-traded funds lost $30.3 billion to investor redemptions this month, putting them on track for their slowest year since 2004.