The U.S. House of Representatives has reintroduced a 401(k) fee disclosure bill, the fifth such bill to be considered by Congress.

The U.S. House of Representatives has introduced the Retirement Security Needs Lifetime Pay Act, designed to encourage Americans to invest lifetime income annuities through tax breaks.

The White House’s earlier plan to merge many of the regulators overseeing the financial services industry is likely to be scrapped, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Thanks to shady money managers like Bernie Madoff who ruined it for everyone, the lucrative and surreptitious heydays of hedge funds may be gone for good.

A Connecticut bill that would have imposed transparency and licensing requirements on hedge funds failed to be signed into law Wednesday when the House of Representatives ran out of time to vote on the measure.

Although the Securities and Exchange Commission is not requiring fund companies to begin producing summary prospectuses until Jan. 1, some fund companies, including the Guinness Atkinson Funds, have already started to equip investors with the plain English, four-page documents.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the members of its newly created Investor Advisory Committee. The committee’s mission is to give investors a greater voice in the regulator’s work.The 15-member panel will advise the Commission about matters concerning investors in the securities markets; provide investor perspective on current, non-enforcement regulatory issues; and be a source of information and recommendations to the Commission concerning its regulatory programs from the point of view of investors. The committee will be co-chaired by Richard “Mac” Hisey, president of AARP Financial and AARP Funds, and Hye-Won Choi, senior vice president and head of corporate governance for TIAA-CREF.

Citi has launched a free Fund Governance Portal for its regulatory administration services clients.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is creating the position of chief operating officer and looking to expand its ranks by 1,000 to better combat fraud.

The Securities and Exchange Commission began repaying more than 590,000 AIM investors $78 million in a fair funds distribution for the market timing that hurt their returns.

Connecticut lawmakers in the House of Representatives are expected to pass a hedge fund transparency bill, possibly ending the state’s days as a hedge fund haven, The Wall Street Journal reports.

In a challenge to one of mutual funds' strongholds, exchange-traded fund providers are targeting defined contribution plans.

While index funds already have a place in the lineup of most 401(k) plans, a proposed federal mandate to require at least one index fund option in these plans is intrusive and unnecessary, according to industry experts.

After several failed attempts, the Securities and Exchange Commission is again revisiting the contentious debate on shareholder proxy voting.

European Union Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy is expected to propose uniform new rules regarding depositories for undertakings in collective investments in transferable securities (UCITs), the European Commission’s version of mutual funds.

The Connecticut state Senate passed a bill to require more disclosure and transparency of hedge funds, private equity firms and venture capitalists. It would also require the investment firms to disclose conflicts of interest to investors.

The Internal Revenue Service has proposed new rules that would grant safe harbor for employers experiencing substantial business hardship that want to suspend or reduce their 401(k) matches.

Government actions to stabilize asset-backed commercial paper, including the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper (ABCP) Money Market Mutual Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (AMLF) and the Money Market Investor Funding Facility (MMIFF), are helping to stabilize ABCP and other short-term instruments, Fitch reports. However, ABCP credit ratings are not improving.

In its zeal to apply a free market philosophy to the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Bush administration created an environment where the agency's enforcement staff was unable to take definitive policy positions or bring enforcement actions, according to Mercer Bullard, associate professor of law at the University of Mississippi School of Law.Testifying on May 7 at a Senate Banking subcommittee hearing, Mercer said that the problems at the SEC reflect a state of "deregulatory capture," where the commission was unaware of and unable to respond to many enforcement matters before they surfaced.

Risk management has taken on a whole new meaning after the crazy behavior of markets during the past 18 months.