Mutual funds

Mutual fund prospectus provider NewRiver is suing Morningstar for using Internet espionage to steal information from its patent-protected system.

Schapiro Expected to Beef Up Enforcement

Financial planners are spending a lot of time these days trying to allay their clients' fears. Anyone who works with a financial adviser most likely has money in the stock market and, therefore, has experienced steep losses in the past year.

Infrastructure funds may have been building interest ever since President Barack Obama announced his commitment to rebuilding America's infrastructure, but the managers of the First American Global Infrastructure fund have been laying the groundwork for years.

Defined contribution plans have been hammered by dropping equity markets, and this chain of losses has caused a ripple effect throughout the fund management industry.

The Investment Company Institute is pushing for improvements to municipal disclosure, which it generally considers limited, non-standardized and stale.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun distributing $321 million to the two million Alliance Capital investors who were harmed by market timing. This first installment is a total of $46 million, distributed to 300,000 investors.

John Hancock Retirement Plan Services has expanded its sales team by 18, hiring eight regional vice presidents and 10 professionals to man its new internal sales desk. This is a 15% increase in John Hancock’s team supporting advisers selling 401(k)s.

RiverSource Investments, American Century Investments and OppenheimerFunds have received "F" grades from a Morningstar analyst for failing to explain recent changes to shareholders and adding to the paranoia of already shaken investors.

Reports that U.S. Sens. Carl Levin's and Charles Grassley's new bill on hedge fund regulation will force funds to publicize the names of clients are untrue, the senators said.

Fidelity on Tuesday began the second phase of job layoffs which started last year. In this phase, 1,700 people will lose their jobs.

Total money market mutual fund assets rose by $2.38 billion in the week ended Feb. 4, for a total of $3.906 trillion, the Investment Company Institute reported.

With the average target-date fund down 17% in 2008, investors might think twice about what has been one of the best-selling fund categories of the past few years, MarketWatch reports.

With few corporate bonds being traded these days, fixed income mutual fund managers are having a very hard time running their funds, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Financial planners are spending a lot of time these days trying to allay their clients’ fears, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports. Anyone who works with a financial adviser most likely has money in the stock market and, therefore, has experienced steep losses in the past year.

With the seven-day simple yield on money market funds now a mere 50 basis points, investors are beginning to look for other places to park their money. In the latest week for which figures are available, investors pulled $7.82 billion out of money market funds, iMoneyNet reported.

Van Eck Global has launched the Market Vectors Pre-Refunded Municipal Index ETF.

Morningstar has unveiled new research and ratings for the 3,000 mutual funds offered in Europe and Asia. With this new service, Morningstar is now offering written analysis on more than 5,000 funds. Worldwide, Morningstar tracks performance and operational data on 110,000 funds globally.

The Federal Reserve is extending a number of liquidity programs set to end on April 30 through Oct. 30 “in light of continuing substantial strains in financial markets.”

Vanguard is entering the UK mutual fund business for the first time and has chosen Tom Rampulla, director of sales for Vanguard Advisor Services in the U.S. to head up the unit, since it will initially focus on selling through financial advisers.