Mutual funds

Charles Schwab has announced that the Charles Schwab Trust Company (CSTC) will offer target-date collective trust funds for retirement plans.

Below-average results are really starting to hurt investors, but new research by Rik Frehen, a Dutch finance scholar, suggests that mutual funds are not bound to under perform or be overshadowed by pension funds. The trick is to not follow the trends of buying and selling based on short-term emotions, but instead to be patient and think more about the long term.

Fidelity Investments has hired Michael Wilens, a senior executive at Thomson Reuters, to head the mutual fund company’s $1.5 trillion asset management division.

Total assets of money market mutual funds fell by $5.51 billion to $3.515 trillion for the week ending June 11, according to the Investment Company Institute.

TIAA-CREF has launched a new service to help sponsors of 403(b) retirement plans meet new Internal Revenue Service requirements by Jan. 1, 2009.

In a conference call Thursday morning, Boston-based Putnam Investments announced that Robert L. "Bob" Reynolds will succeed Charles E. "Ed" Haldeman to become the firm's president and chief executive officer. Haldeman plans to stay on board and will take on a new role as the chairman of Putnam Investment Management, LLC.

The Securities and Exchange Commission just released its full summer agenda and according to SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, the commission’s only firm plans are that it will be extremely busy in the coming months.

Financial services firms continue to battle against one another for wealth management talent even though companies are forced to pay hefty salaries that crimp profits.

Fidelity Investments is having one of its weakest first five months in recent history. Only 39% of Fidelity’s equity funds are in the company of the top half of their peers, whereas 64% were a year ago, according to Morningstar, The Wall Street Journal reports.

While Morningstar certainly has carved out its niche and made a name for itself arming individual investors with mutual fund data and insight, the company plans to increase its focus on financial advisers and institutions, or the “pros” eager to pay for quality research. That’s according to an interview with Morningstar CEO Joe Mansueto in this week’s issue of BusinessWeek.

With the dollar beaten down - 7% against the euro and 6% against the yen so far this year - fund companies are offering investors the opportunity to invest in exchange-traded funds that invest in foreign currencies, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Hedge funds may be coming off their worst first quarter in history, including, surprisingly enough, a poor showing in the energy sector, but not everyone is doing poorly.

Having already raised more than $850,000 this year, Mutual Funds Against Cancer is aiming to top $1 million, all of which will be donated to the Center for Applied Cancer Sciences (“CACS”) at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

NEW YORK - Days before the European Union celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Euro last week, Dechert LLP held a widely popular seminar here on the how-to's of Undertakings for Collective Investment Trusts, or UCITS, which have been growing at a rapid pace not only on the Continent, but also in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East.

Asset management executives should have no illusion about the direction Sen. Barack Obama would take financial services policy if he were elected president.

WASHINGTON-On the presidential campaign trail, Sen. John McCain's financial services agenda has hardly been front-and-center.

As Big Brown was preparing last week to get ready for his big day Saturday at the Belmont Stakes, his owners and financiers are already counting their predicted earnings, as well as forging ahead with the $100 million seed capital for a hedge fund that will invest in other racehorses.

Fidelity Axes N.H. Workers

A Strategic Insight report released last week points out that traditional point-of-sale commissions for mutual fund sales are close to being extinct. Of all the sales in 2007, 60% occurred without any front-end loads.

The $1.6 trillion JPMorgan Chase & Co. said Tuesday it will hire 300 employees over the next five years to expand its fund services operations in Boston, and has started offering its Chase Strategic Portfolio, an advisory program for retail banking customers, through its bank branch network.