Mutual funds

Capital Fulfillment Group has debuted ClickOne, a summary prospectus tool in compliance with Securities and Exchange Commission rules. Using patented technologies, it is designed to offer a simple and cost-effective way for mutual fund companies to equip investors with summary prospectuses via print-on-demand. CFG estimates this will reduce asset management firms' printing costs by 80%.

America’s millionaires are bouncing back. The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more, not including their primary residence, grew 16% to 7.8 million in 2009, up from 6.7 million the year before, Spectrem Group’s “Affluent Market Insights 2010” report shows. In 2008, the millionaire population declined 27%.

Driven by the success of exchange-traded fund provider BlackRock, ETFs appear to be gaining notable market share in 401(k) plans, and while their use so far has primarily been among small companies, once the trend catches on among larger employers, ETFs’ popularity in 401(k) plans could become quite notable.

Nearly 70% of defined contribution balances have returned to levels prior to the stock market slump of 2008 and 2009, according to a survey by Mercer, a provider of benefits administration outsourcing.

Being owned by a bank has handcuffed many mutual fund units. Just don't tell that to JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s J.P. Morgan Funds.

$420B in Retirement Plan, Endowment Assets Expected to Change Hands in 2010

Baltimore asset management titan T. Rowe Price reported its executives took compensation cuts in 2009, led by CEO James Kennedy, who had his compensation package slashed by 17%.

Nine percent of executives in the finance, insurance and real estate sector plan to hire full-time staff members in the next quarter, a new survey by Robert Half International found. Overall, 10% are planning on hiring, and only 6% are planning layoffs.

Long-term mutual funds gained another $10.97 billion in sales in the week ended Feb. 24, the Investment Company Institute said. Sales over the past 50 weeks have been consistently positive and near half a trillion, or $487 billion.

Royal Bank of Canada’s wealth management division reported net income of $213 million for the first quarter ended Jan. 31, up 72% from the $91 million from a year earlier, partly due to higher fee-based client assets and some accounting adjustments.

In the face of the shrinking asset management landscape and soaring distribution costs, not to mention the home-office centralization of brokerage firms’ investment choices, fund companies need highly accomplished national accounts teams, according to a new kasina report, “Excellence in Distribution: National Accounts.”

Wealthy investors will continue to be careful with their money, Schwab found in a survey of 1,100 independent advisers with more than $252 billion in assets under management, the latest installment in its semi-annual Independent Advisor Outlook Study.

Warburg Pincus will invest $230 million in Primerica, the mutual fund and life insurance sales unit of Citigroup, in return for a 23% stake, filings show.

AdvisorShares and Peritus Asset Management have just filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to offer the Peritus High Yield ETF, an exchange-traded fund that will invest in senior and subordinated corporate debt and loans across various industries and maturities with the goal of delivering both capital appreciation and high current income.

ProShares is planning to offer four international sector and three U.S. regional banking exchange-traded funds, which will bring its stable of ETF offerings to 99.

Direxion has launched a pair of long and short exchange-traded funds linked to the performance of short-term U.S. Treasuries, the Direxion Daily 2-Year Treasury Bull 3x Shares and the Direxion Daily 2-Year Treasury Bear 3x Shares. The funds are linked to the one-security NYSE Current 2-Year U.S. Treasury Index.

Ten of Vanguard’s index funds and corresponding exchange-traded fund share classes are now linked to updated MSCI 25/50 sector indexes that have expanded their concentration of holdings to comply with IRS diversification rules.

Direxion, in conjunction with sub-advisor IPOX Capital Management, has launched the Direxion Long/Short Global IPO fund, which will provide retail investors with institutional-style access to investment opportunities in the global initial public offering and spin-off market. The long portion of the portfolio will invest in promising IPOs one year old or less, and the short portion will seek out stocks in their second to fourth year that are expected to underperform.

529 college savings plans have attracted $100 billion in 11 million accounts, roughly a quarter of the money parents in the U.S. have set aside for their child’s education. But that’s far short of the hundreds of billions of dollars asset management firms expected them to attract.

Total assets in exchange-traded funds fell 5.8%, or $45 billion, in January from a month earlier, according to monthly data from State Street.