Wealth management

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Fieldpoint Private Bank and Trust announced Wednesday that it hired Robert S. Matthews as its president and chief executive.

Having made a string of insurance agency acquisitions, Northeast Bancorp a year ago was projecting 10% annual growth in its insurance business. But the economy hasn't cooperated. Although the Lewiston, Maine, bank's insurance unit is eking out growth of 1% to 2%, the poor market means its plans for fast growth will have to wait, said Jim Delamater, the bank's president and chief executive.

Investors pulled cash out of municipal bond mutual funds last week for just the third time in a year and a half, despite a strong week for state and local government debt.

Citigroup Inc. and Bank of America Merrill Lynch continue to vie for the top underwriting position in the municipal bond industry, according to midyear rankings from Thomson Reuters.

Under the theory that lucrative investment opportunities like alternative energy will be more likely to spring from overseas markets, Fidelity Investments is positioning its 20-year-old environmental energy mutual fund right at the crossroads of those two sectors.

First Republic Bank began as an independent bank in 1985, and last week, it became independent once again.

Investment advisers may face tough compliance issues in the wake of the Securities and Exchange Commission's unanimous adoption last week of rules designed to prevent IAs from making political contributions to elected officials to obtain business from state and local pension funds, investment pools and college-savings accounts.

BlackRock Inc.'s Evy Hambro, whose gold fund in Europe has beaten most of its rivals, has started the firm's first gold mutual fund in the U.S. as demand for the metal rises on concern that global economic growth is slowing.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executives defended valuations for credit default swaps that were presented to American International Group Inc. during the financial crisis, saying they reflected actual market prices.

Morgan Stanley, owner of the world's largest brokerage, hired 100 bankers to offer more products such as jumbo mortgages and structured loans to Morgan Stanley Smith Barney clients, and may quintuple their numbers by the end of 2011, a person with knowledge of the strategy said.

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In June, advisers were more confident about the longer-term prospects for the U.S. economy and the stock market, according to Rydex | SGI AdvisorBenchmarking.

UBS AG recently made three new additions to its adviser staff, in two different Florida offices.

After launching an initiative to revamp its wealth management business in April, Hartford Financial Services Group said John C. Walters, current president of wealth management, will leave Hartford at the end of July to "pursue other opportunities."

Annuities sales through banks maintained their modest recovery pace in April after hitting record lows at the beginning of the year.

Now that Bank of New York Mellon Corp. has closed its $2.31 billion acquisition of PNC's Global Investment Servicing Inc., it is looking abroad for growth in its asset servicing business.

Joseph J. Cassano, whose derivative bets on subprime loans forced American International Group Inc. into a U.S. bailout, defended the deals while the insurer's chief risk officer said the firm was "wrong" on the trades.

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UMB Financial Corp. of Kansas City, Mo., said it has signed a definitive agreement to buy Prairie Capital Management LLC, an independent national asset management and wealth management firm in Kansas City.