Wealth management

The opportunity for smaller banks to position their wealth management businesses as alternatives to those of big, wounded banks and brokerage houses is quickly disappearing.

JPMorgan Chase and a U.S. unit of the French bank Natixis are each offering money market mutual funds aimed at wooing back customers spooked by the financial crisis.

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Bank of America's private wealth management business U.S. Trust has capped its 2010 national wealth management team expansion with the addition of five new advisers.

A survey by TD Ameritrade shows that independent registered investment advisers are worried about the time and money associated with pending regulatory changes.

Assets in U.S.-listed exchange-traded funds and exchange-traded products surpassed $1 trillion for the first time, reaching $1.027 trillion on Dec. 16, BlackRock said.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. held onto its lead in global investment banking revenue in 2010, followed by Bank of America Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., according to preliminary yearend data released Tuesday by Dealogic.

Morningstar has added a new credit research module to its portal for advisers and other investment professionals, the Morningstar Analyst Research Center.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. plans to ramp up its wealth management business by expanding its adviser force in the next couple of years.

Employers are clearly more optimistic about the economy, with a second 40% tranche that had suspended 401(k) contributions planning to resume them by mid-2011, the Profit Sharing/401(k) Council of America said.

Rollovers into traditional IRAs occur during the working years, not just at retirement, according to the Investment Company Institute.

The U.K.'s Financial Services Authority has fined a former executive from Toronto-Dominion Bank $1.2 million for intentionally mispricing trading positions in credit derivatives to cover his losses and banned him from working in the financial services industry.

Hedge fund launches climbed to 260 in the three months that ended in September, an increase of nearly 30% from 201 in the second quarter, according to data released Wednesday by Hedge Fund Research.

While 2010 represented a modest improvement for mergers and acquisitions, the market for initial public offerings surged back to life, as domestic IPO activity eclipsed the previous two years, according to a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

RBS Securities Inc., the investment banking and brokerage unit of Royal Bank of Scotland, is looking to add trading and sales professionals and strategists specializing in Latin American markets, according to senior fixed-income officials.

The municipal market has become so turbulent and illiquid that even investors who find tax-exempt yields appealing are sitting on their hands.

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While most wealth managers say transparency in reporting is the name of the game, most are not doing a good job of it, according to a survey by SEI Global Wealth Services.

New life insurance premiums sold through banks in the third quarter hit $512 million, up from $225 million in the third quarter of 2008, the year the market collapsed, according to Kehrer-Limra.