Mutual funds

William F. Galvin, Massachusetts secretary of the commonwealth, has written a letter to Fidelity Chairman Edward C. Johnson III asking the firm to repurchase auction-rate securities that it sold to investors through its brokerage unit, Dow Jones reports.

Assets in mutual funds worldwide declined 5.1% to $24.81 trillion by the end of the first quarter, the Investment Company Institute announced Tuesday. It is the first decline in nearly four years, which the ICI attributed to the market’s decline, depreciation of the dollar and one country, Hong Kong, failing to report its figures.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced Tuesday that it made its first of four payments to the 1.5 million Putnam Investments who were harmed by market timing, paying $40 million to 600,000 investors. In all, the distributions will total $150 million.

A number of brokerage firms that sold auction-rate securities, including Fidelity Investments, do not think they should be forced to buy back the instruments, much as the investment banks that created them have been doing, to the tune of $40 billion, The Wall Street Journal reports. Their thinking is that they were merely sellers of the ARS and didn’t have knowledge of their imminent demise, as the banks that ran the auctions did.

Forward Management has hired Jeffrey P. Cusack as president. J. Alan Reid, Jr. will remain chief executive officer, focusing on strategic direction.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is reportedly investigating Fidelity Investments and Charles Schwab over auction-rate securities, although it is unclear at this point over whether the probe is into sales or investment strategies.

Fidelity is expanding its three-year-old plan to “virtualize,” or standardize, its servers—so that there no longer is great a bond between data, applications, desktops and storage, and the underlying server and operating system infrastructure— focusing on both x86 and reduced-instruction-set computing, or RISC, servers, Network World reports.

Mutual fund investors appear to be biting the bullet amid market turbulence and talk of the recession, the Associated Press reports. But most of their money is pouting into money market and bond funds, $75 billion and $4.5 billion, respectively, along with renewed interest in dividend-paying instruments.

Genworth Financial in Richmond, Va., has launched a new wealth management division, Genworth Financial Wealth Management. The launch completes the integration of two Genworth companies: AssetMark Investment Services, which it acquired in October of 2006, and Genworth Financial Asset Management.

Fidelity Equips RIAs With e-Signature Software

Khan Heads Development For ING U.S. Wealth Unit

The Securities and Exchange Commission has opened a website originally created for internal purposes at the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations to fight anti-money laundering, for compliance officers at mutual funds.

It's not so surprising that women earn an average of 80 cents on the dollar men earn. It doesn't even come as a shock that their 401(k) balances are about $57,000, 40% less than the $95,000 to $100,000 men have stored away. That's attributed to the fact women earn less in the first place and often leave the workplace for years, permanently or opt to work part-time in order to raise children and act as caregivers for their elderly parents.

In addition to helping employees save for retirement, a solid 401(k) plan can help companies to attract, motivate and retain good workers, enhance a company's corporate reputation and contribute to the long-term financial success of the business, according to a new study by Charles Schwab.

Ever since those first gatherings under a buttonwood tree, the business of Wall Street has been highly social, with personal contacts, access to information and networking abilities playing a crucial role.

Sharp money managers love market volatility.

The Security and Exchange Commission’s 30-day rule temporarily banning short selling of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae stock is set to expire Tuesday night.

It took more than a decade of negotiating to get approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission, but actively managed exchange-traded funds finally came to market this year.

Money market mutual fund assets rose by $14.14 billion to $3.575 trillion for the week ending Aug. 13, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Despite the credit crisis — or perhaps because of it — there has never been a better time to invest in fixed-income products, particularly triple-A commercial mortgage-backed securities, according to portfolio managers at Putnam Investments.