Mutual funds

Payden & Rygel announced Wednesday with a WSJ tombstone advertisement that it has opened its first office on the East Coast, selecting Boston’s Financial District.

Despite a jump from 2008 lows, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 1500 companies saw little change in their pension plans funded status last year, a new study claims.

When bankers first started pushing for the concept of the financial supermarket 30 years ago, they lacked the regulatory permission and the technological know-how to succeed. Then, in the 1990s, the mutual fund industry followed suit with web-based, full-service fund supermarkets.

In their attempts to mend the “rattled” investor trust in the alternative space, funds-of-funds managers are planning to utilize transparency and examine their fee structures moving forward, a new study claims.

BALTIMORE—The uncertainty and confusion around the fiduciary standard has jolted the financial services industry leading hundreds to pack the rooms at FINRA’s annual conference in Baltimore.

The Internal Revenue Service has begun mailing out questionnaires to 401(k) plan sponsors to assess compliance with retirement plan regulations.

BOSTON -- Money Management Executive Publisher Michael Stanton presented the 2010 Fund Operations Awards on May 20 at NICSA's General Membership Meeting at the Downtown Harvard Club here.

The volatility in the S&P 500 Index over the past few weeks serves as a reminder of the importance of reviewing portfolio holdings on a regular basis because, as we have just seen, the fundamentals are fluid. Closely monitoring equity holdings is key to ensuring a portfolio continues to meet an investor's goals and tolerance for risk.

ICI: Senate Bill Still Needs Work

First Republic Bank is hiring in a bid to expand its wealth management operation.

Growing up in Honduras, Maria Chrin heard the story of how her grandmother, a widow lacking financial savvy, lost a large amount of money because she could not figure out what to do with the stocks her husband owned in U.S. banks.

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service, concerned that some Build America Bonds are being sold to investors at prices that are too high, is urging municipal issuers to track the trading of their BABs through the Electronic Municipal Market Access system and to question underwriters about the pricing.

With the SEC money market fund rules taking effect this Friday and the Libor up sharply, fund managers are reportedly beginning to see lending to European banks as too much of a risk. The bigger worry is this pullback has the potential to lead to another credit crunch like the one that nearly crippled the capital markets in 2008.

Kenneth A. Johnson, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s new chief financial officer as of last Friday, takes over the agency’s financial operations just as the regulator prepares to amass a bigger operating budget and beef up examinations of mutual fund complexes and hedge funds to get ahead of systemic risk and ponzi schemes of the Madoff magnitude.

If the recession has any pluses at all, it’s that people now seem to be more mindful of how uncertain the market—and their future—really is.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has censured and fined Piper Jaffray & Co. $700,000 for failing to retain about 4.3 million e-mails over a six-year period and for not alerting FINRA that it was having problems with its e-mail retention and retrieval.

Stevens says bank-like regulations could hurt mutual funds.

Current trading culture in fund industry runs contrary to basic investing principles, Jack Bogle says.

Former top PIMCO executive looks for new direction for firm.

Janus Capital Group CEO Richard M. Weil is planning to reshape his company from its domestic stock focus into a global, multi-asset management powerhouse.