Wealth management

Bond ladders or bond funds? For retirement investing, it's often been one approach or the other. Both have pros and cons.

Morgan Stanley Smith Barney has caught the spotlight — and some scrutiny — with its strategy to give advisors more access to social media.

Vanguard and TIAA-CREF stand out in terms of offering research and trades via mobile devices, according to Corporate Insight.

Banks are offering consumers as much as a 6% return on certain U.S. checking accounts, a Bankrate.com survey found.

Bank of America's Andrew Sieg, head of retirement services, will now also lead its global investment solutions unit as Kunal Kamlani steps down and leaves the company.

ING Group NV's U.S. retirement division is attempting to pursue small and midsize defined contribution business through the banking channel and with a convenience payroll strategy.

The Financial Planning Coalition, a group that includes several organizations representing thousands of financial advisors, last week released a copy of a petition it sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission, asking the regulatory agency to extend the definition of fiduciary standard to include "anyone providing personalized investment advice to retail clients."

The money stream is flowing again. After two years of stagnant or shrinking revenue, the 50 largest independent broker-dealers reported that annual revenues rebounded last year.

Private banks and wealth managers must adapt to far higher expectations from clients and a new set of regulations. Those that can't simply won't survive, according to a global survey of senior industry executives.

"If you get at what someone's underlying values are, the right choices become more obvious," advises the president of one financial coaching firm on dealing with couples.

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Bank of America will hire more than 500 advisers in its Merrill Edge unit yearend, nearly doubling the count of employees that work with clients with smaller investment portfolios.

Charles Schwab Corp. says expanding its investor services unit by a few hundred new retail outlets won't raise a conflict with its own advisor custody business.

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Bank of America Corp.'s Merrill Lynch unit must face a group lawsuit by union and public employee retirement funds over mortgage-backed securities, a federal judge ruled.

California has picked TIAA-CREF to manage its college savings plan that has about $4 billion of assets.

Investors would rather pay commissions for the financial advice they receive than a fee based on assets under management, according to Cerulli Associates.

RBC Wealth Management, the unit of Royal Bank of Canada of Toronto that oversees almost $200 billion for more than 350,000 households, won the highest satisfaction ranking in a survey of full-service investment firms' customers, J.D. Power & Associates said.

A new wave of dot-coms is turning heads and building paper wealth for tech company workers. Unlike many who suffered in the crash of 2000, "dot-com 2.0" option holders are apt to assume they're riding a bubble — and they're looking for help to make the most of their unrealized riches.

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