Practice management

A top official with the Labor Department defended the controversial plan to expand the definition of "fiduciary" to cover people providing advice to retirement plans on a commission-based model, a proposal strongly opposed by industry groups representing independent broker-dealers and advisors.

When it comes to retirement income, clients are concerned about rising health costs, and they probably also should be concerned about long-term care, said a top executive of Merrill Lynch's Retirement Income Program, in a keynote address at the Retirement Income Industry Association's fall conference.

Top economists who spoke here at the Insured Retirement Institute annual conference told attendees to brace for fundamental paradigm shifts as they wait for global and domestic economies to stabilize.

Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. has been fined $1 million for supervisory failures that allowed a Texas broker to run a Ponzi scheme.

Marketing expert Marie Swift details a strategy that works for financial advisors and allied professionals who are interested in serving families with significant wealth. And while this strategy works especially well for that demographic, the truly high-net-worth crowd, there are also applications for advisors who serve the middle-market millionaire and mass affluent.

Renaissance Capital has installed trade surveillance software from Redkite Financial Markets.

State Street said it acquired Complementa Investment-Controlling AG, a Swiss supplier of investment performance measurement and analytics services.

CME Group said it set new monthly records for clearing both interest rate swaps and credit default swaps.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is warning broker-dealers it will scrutinize the procedures they use to ensure they don't run afoul of the new market access rule when dealing in subaccounts used by disreputable day traders.

MassMutual Retirement Services’ 2011 campaign to prompt 401(k) participants to save more has succeeded in boosting deferral rates by 4.34%. It also was aimed at getting those who were not saving into the game, and helping those with portfolios to revisit their allocations.

401K GPS has launched it personalized 401(k) monitoring service, to ensure participants’ strategies fit their risk profile. While the service monitors portfolios on a daily basis, it issues quarterly recommendations on how investors should reallocate their holdings, based on retirement goals and market expectations. Should volatility in the markets become pronounced, 401K GPS will issue intra-quarterly alerts.

In a union that would create one of the largest CPA and business advisory firms in California, Top 100 Firm Burr Pilger Mayer is merging with Windes & McClaughry Accountancy Corp., effective Jan. 1, 2012.

Krawcheck is out, Darnell is in.

Calculating the worth of your practice requires placing a value on different types of capital.

A significant number of advisors who serve 401(k) plans will ramp up their retirement income planning practices over the next few years, according to a new report from Principal Financial, called the “2011 Best Practices in Retirement Income Planning Study.”

CBOE Stock Exchange said it agreed to acquire the National Stock Exchange, an all-electronic stock exchange now based in Jersey City, N.J.

A Long Island-based investment advisor repeatedly lied to investors to conceal the fact that his PIPE investment and trading strategy was failing during the financial crisis and stole more than $1 million in client assets to buy personal luxury items including a Lexus, a Mercedes and a Rolex watch, according to the SEC.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has hit Raymond James & Associates and Raymond James Financial Services Inc. with an order to pay $1.69 million in restitution to more than 15,500 customers who were charged unfair commissions.

Data theft and misuse by employees has plagued Wall Street firms for years. Here’s what to do to protect yourself from threats inside your organization.

Financial Planning senior editor Donna Mitchell says financial advisors are particularly skilled at helping their clients define how their financial lives are -- and should be -- structured. If only they were able to do the same for their practices.