Mutual funds

Two college-savings companies are borrowing a page from the consumer cash-back loyalty playbook, offering customers rebates on services including refinancing mortgages or opening online bank accounts. Futuretrust, a unit of Destination Maternity Corp., and Upromise Investments have partnered with a series of other financial services companies to offer rebates that can be swept into section 529 college-savings plans.

The financial services industry has been pulling in solid profits lately, but experts say firms should be mindful about how they dole out year-end bonuses and to keep the focus on rewarding long-term performance.

Thirty-eight percent of senior mangers around the world believe the economic crisis will end by the second quarter of next year, Atradius found in a survey of 3,500 executives in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

The use of wiretaps and recordings of conversations to help underpin the insider trading case against the Galleon Group hedge fund struck legal experts as unusual, for an investigation involving the Securities and Exchange Commission.

GAMCO reported that its profits in the third quarter rose 23% to $14.7 million, or 53 cents per fully diluted share, compared to $12 million, or 43 cents per share, a year ago. On a sequential basis, assets under management increased 14.5% from the previous quarter to $24.5 billion.

A Boston federal jury ruled in favor of the Securities and Exchange Commission in a case against a former Fidelity Investments trader accused of sharing inside information on Covad Communications with his mother, tipping her off when the fund giant was about to make a large purchase of the stock.

While retail investors have largely sat out the broad market rally that started in March, continuing sound economic indicators and resilient stocks should entice them back in, The Globe and Mail reports.

Fueled by a 26% increase in assets under management to $154.9 billion, Eaton Vance announced that its fiscal fourth quarter profits rose 39% to $48.4 million, or 39 cents a share, up from $34.9 million, or 28 cents a share, from a year ago. Revenue increased 2% to $254 million, beating analyst forecasts of $250 million.

Attracted by exchange-traded funds’ transparency, liquidity and low fees, more institutional investors turned to these instruments during the crisis, Barclays Global Investors said in a report based on Thomson Reuters data.

Three Join Wilmington's Wealth Advisory Business

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Mutual funds and large institutional investors are being spared from a new Securities and Exchange Commission proposal to reign in the growing use of dark pools to hide trading information, since only trades smaller than $200,000 would be exposed.

Invesco and Eaton Vance last week launched an exchange-traded fund and an actively managed bond fund, respectively, designed to track the performance of taxable Build America Bonds-a potentially transformative product that has helped galvanize public finance in 2009.

The U.S. economy is well on its way to recovery, according to most mutual fund CIOs, and just about all the economic charts show key growth criteria improving, barring an unexpected jolt.

With income limits and filing status restrictions being removed on Roth IRAs as of Jan. 1, Fidelity Investments has created an online Roth IRA conversion calculator available to its independent registered investment advisor clients and broker/dealer clients of National Financial, Fidelity’s correspondent clearing business. Using this calculator, advisers can walk their clients through a series of questions to help them determine whether a Roth IRA might be appropriate.

Barclays has launched the iShares S&P India Nifty 50 Index Fund, which tracks the S&P CNX Nifty Index of the 50 largest and most liquid Indian securities listed on the National Stock Exchange of India.

OppenheimerFunds decided to settle a lawsuit filed by the state of Oregon over its 529 plan for $20 million, payable to 45,000 investors in the plan early next year.

Transamerica has introduced a mutual fund platform for workplace retirement plans that offers target maturity choices, 300 funds from 35 companies and has no proprietary fund requirements. Sponsors and advisers also have a choice of pricing.

Three days after saying it would delay the effective date to permit 401(k) plan administrators to offer investment advice, the Department of Labor decided to scrap the rule altogether. The third extension for the effective date would have been May 17, 2010.

R.R. Donnelley has developed a financial services application compatible with iPhones, called Socrates, that investors can use to make purchases. R.R. Donnelley plans to follow up on this with additional smart phone applications.