Mutual funds

Fidelity Investments has created a credit card in partnership with American Express that allows customers to transfer rewards from retail purchases to their individual retirement accounts.

Citing steep redemptions and continued market declines, Fidelity Investments Chairman Ned Johnson indicated the firm’s 7% layoffs, or loss of 3,000 jobs, could surge if conditions worsen, the Boston Herald reports.

By overturning a lower court’s dismissal of a case against former Columbia Funds executives James Tambone and Robert Hussey, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is permitting the Securities and Exchange Commission to proceed with its market-timing lawsuit against the two men.

David R. Holst, 43, a mortgage broker in Tucson, Ariz., pleased guilty of fraudulently collecting $350,000 from mutual fund investor clients and recklessly, illegally gambling the money, the Arizona Daily Star reports. He accepted the charges of securities fraud and filing a false income tax return.

Personal financial columns are beginning to warn investors that fund fees could rise in 2009, as mutual fund companies try to grapple with fewer assets under management.

Despite some doomsayers predicting the Dow Jones Industrial Average could fall to 7,000 or lower, most of the speakers at the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit said that the market has probably hit bottom. That said, they don’t see volatility going away anytime soon.

Buttressed by favorable interest rates and investors looking for shelter from falling equity prices, U.S. fixed annuity sales set a new quarterly record. Total U.S. sales of fixed annuities rose to an estimated $27.1 billion for the third quarter, according to a Beacon Research study of 51 insurance companies representing 87% of the market. Sales were up 54% from last year's third quarter, and up 10% from the previous quarter, marking the highest sales since the study began in 2003.

PNC Global Investment Names Wolcott President

Seeing traffic on Yahoo's finance website and Marketwatch.com burgeon, Fidelity Investments has decided to try its hand at financial news for itself by revamping its website.

The Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations at the Securities and Exchange Commission reminded fund companies that with all of the staffing and operational cutbacks taking place, compliance is an area where shortcuts cannot be tolerated.

Fidelity Promoting FDIC-Insured CDs

State Street Corp. will lay off 6% of its workforce, or 1,800 people, in the first quarter. Initially, the layoffs will cost the company as much as $350 million, or 51 cents to 55 cents a share, but that will then revert to $400 million in annual savings.

Neuberger Berman managers have bid for and won the right to buy the asset management business in a court-supervised sale, a source told sister publication Investment Dealers' Digest.

The unprecedented financial crisis of 2008 has redefined everyone's perception of risk, sending private wealth managers back to the drawing board to make sure clients really understand how risky complicated products can be.

NEW YORK - "There is so much stimulus in the economy. The punchbowls are at the party, they're spiked-but no one is drinking yet." That was the apt summary of the current economic and investment picture by Rodney Olea, manager of the AHA Limited Maturity Fixed Income Fund, speaking at SunStar's press briefing for Lipper Leaders here last week.

Everywhere you look these days, people are talking about green cars, green energy, greenhouse gases and even green mutual funds. This new demand for all things green is enough to make some money managers green with envy.

Faced with economic difficulties, almost one out of every five, or 18%, of Americans are dipping into their 401(k) savings, Bank of America found in its annual Retirement Savings Survey.

Reserve Funds has added insult to injury, literally, to the investors in its Primary Fund. The fund, which broke the buck on Sept. 16 and has been struggling to return investors’ assets ever since, is now valuing the remaining balance at 98.5 cents per share.

Alex Widmer, CEO of Swiss bank Julius Baer, died unexpectedly Dec. 3 at the age of 52.

Investors continued to rush to the safety of cash this week, putting an additional $29.06 billion in money market mutual funds, for a total of $3.743 trillion, according to the Investment Company Institute.