Global investing

The Securities and Exchange Commission has appointed five individuals to specialize in various areas of investigation and has also created an Office of Market Intelligence to compile the hundreds of thousands of tips, complaints and referrals that the SEC receives each year.

As wealthy customers have started to reevaluate their financial situations, financial advisers at PNC Wealth Management have increased and improved their conversations with wealthy clients in an effort to retain and expand relationships.

Calamos Investments, which has $30.5 billion of assets under management, has elected to make State Street Corp. its sole investment servicing provider for all of its U.S. and global products. As a result, State Street will expand beyond its current back-office offerings to provide custody, fund administration and securities lending services.

WASHINGTON — If anyone here is happy to see 2009 in his rearview mirror, it is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has adopted rules that substantially increase protections for investors who turn their assets over to investment advisers, which hopefully will prevent another massive, Madoff-like Ponzi scheme.

The majority of high-net-worth investors have stuck with their financial advisers despite heavy losses to their portfolios as a result of the financial crisis that have left them “highly distrustful and disillusioned."

A group of Democratic lawmakers has introduced legislation that would impose a tax on Wall Street securities transactions.

A majority of brokers and advisers support and understand key elements of the fiduciary standard, a survey of nearly 900 professionals by SEI Investments found. Eighty-six percent of advisers and 53% of brokers agree with the statement that, “All financial professionals who give investment and financial advice should be required to meet the fiduciary standard.”

The Spectrem Millionaire Investor Confidence Index rose five points in November to minus 10, putting it in neutral territory for the first time in nearly two years. Likewise, the Spectrem Affluent Investor Confidence Index, measuring the investment confidence of households with $500,000 or more investable assets, advanced three points to minus four, also bringing it back into neutral territory for the first time in two years.

Wirehouse advisors are increasingly shunning separate account programs in which securities are directly held in favor of other types of managed accounts that use mutual funds, exchange-traded funds, annuities or other professionally managed securities because they find the latter gives them more flexibility to control their clients' assets, according to a new report from Cerulli Associates.

The use of wiretaps and recordings of conversations to help underpin the insider trading case against the Galleon Group hedge fund struck legal experts as unusual, for an investigation involving the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Only 6% of wealthy investors with $500,000 or more in investable assets characterize themselves as enthusiastic about investing, while a full 49% are either reluctant or tentative about returning to the market, PNC Wealth Management found in its sixth annual Wealth and Values Investors’ Outlook survey of 1,046 investors.

The addition of non-managed assets to a unified managed account could be the next step in the product's evolution, but some industry providers are skeptical whether the interest in stock-picking right now is enough for this enhancement to take off.

Robert McCann, the new head of UBS Wealth Management Americas, has called on some long-serving Merrill Lynch executives to help turn around the division.

The addition of non-managed assets to a unified managed account could be the next step in the product's evolution, but some industry providers are skeptical whether the interest in stock-picking right now is enough for this enhancement to take off.

In 2007, Philip Moses, a Raymond James adviser at First Federal Bank of Florida in Lake City, had a local physician as a client who wanted to diversify his $1.5 million portfolio.

As exchange-traded funds continue to grow in scope and popularity, investment experts warn that some products, such as leveraged and inverse ETFs, may be too dangerous for all but the most experienced hands.

NEW YORK - Regulatory officials are pondering significant changes to the way the U.S. oversees financial markets in the wake of last year's credit crisis and the failure to prevent Bernard Madoff's massive Ponzi scheme, but lawmakers will have to make some hard choices before any real changes can happen.

Regulators are looking for ways to increase accounting safeguards for investment advisors who have custody of client assets, but an investment advisor's group says some of the proposed changes are too broad and go too far.

When like-named target-date funds experienced a wide range of investment returns in 2008, regulators at the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Labor took notice.