Wealth management

JPMorgan Chase & Co., consistently one of the top municipal bond underwriters, has been responding to increased appetite in the market recently by expanding its retail networks, marketing taxable municipal bonds for international distribution and bulking up its public finance staff.

As president and founding principal of her own financial advisory firm, Tower Bridge Advisors, Maris Ogg has a lesson to teach her clients: Watch and wait.

Prudential PLC said its nonexecutive directors are backing Chief Executive Tidjane Thiam to remain in his post after his failed attempt to buy American International Group Inc.'s main Asian unit.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch has relaunched a retirement services platform for companies with fewer than 100 employees.

A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analyst who fled while on probation for leading a $6.7 million insider trading scheme was ordered to pay a $27.7 million judgment in a lawsuit filed by federal regulators.

UBS Wealth Management Americas has hired four advisers from Merrill Lynch/Bank of America for its Jacksonville, Fla., office.

As many as 11,000 wire house advisers may be on the move, according to a report by Aite Group in Boston. Job satisfaction is a problem. While 15% of wire house advisers are very satisfied with their firm and have no intention of leaving, most are not so fired up about their employers. In fact, 20% say they're ready to break from their firm within the next two years. …

An "empowered investor base" insisting on more transparency and liquidity from managers as well as on absolute returns and uncorrelated investment strategies has led to a spike in demand for alternative mutual funds, a report concluded.

Saving for college has become an increasing concern for many families — and it's not just affecting parents. A Fidelity Investments survey found that rising education costs are a major worry for high school seniors as well, a sign that advisers can be an important part of including children in the conversation around college savings and building a sound financial plan.

Bank sales of annuities may have started out the year on the wrong foot — January was down 24% from an already weak December — but they have fought back, rising 15% in February and by 28% in March, according to the Kehrer-Jackson Monthly Bank Annuity Sales Survey.

Financial planners are reporting that 19% of the calls they got in the first quarter were about retirement planning, up from 13% in the fourth quarter, according to a report by Financial Finesse, a trends researcher in Manhattan Beach, Calif. The firm analyzed 1,340 phone and e-mail queries sent to its 10 financial consultants.

Life insurance sales grew 10% in the first quarter from a year earlier, according to the latest figures from Limra, the life insurance trade group in Windsor, Conn.

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Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s bankruptcy estate sued JPMorgan Chase & Co. Wednesday, alleging it illegally siphoned billions of dollars from Lehman in the days before the troubled investment bank filed the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Sallie Krawcheck, president of Bank of America Corp.'s global wealth division, told the company's Merrill Lynch brokers that neither she, nor their compensation system, are headed out the door.

The company announced Tuesday that Jim Fletcher, a portfolio manager with more than 25 years of experience, has joined First Republic Private Wealth Management in Newport Beach, Calif.

BB&T Corp.'s mutual fund family has had a dramatic gain in assets over the past year, and the bank's asset management arm is laying the groundwork for more expansion.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has censured and fined Piper Jaffray & Co. $700,000 for failing to retain about 4.3 million e-mails over six years and for not alerting it to problems it was having with e-mail retention and retrieval.

BNY Mellon Wealth Management hopes to increase sales this year by pitching its custody services to registered investment advisers.