Wealth management

Adviser confidence in the economy and the stock market declined in February.

After a little more than a year at the helm of Umpqua Bank's wealth management business, Kelly Johnson can point to some big accomplishments — but also to all the work he has left to do.

Ask a broker why 12b-1 fees exist and there will be a variety of answers: they cover marketing and distribution costs; processing and record-keeping costs in a 401(k) plan; payment for brokers; and sale of fund shares. The word brokers often leave out is: profit.

American International Group Inc. agreed to sell an Asian life insurance unit with 20 million customers to Prudential PLC for $35.5 billion in the company's biggest divestiture since it was bailed out by the U.S.

Being owned by a bank has handcuffed many mutual fund units. Just don't tell that to J.P. Morgan Funds. The JPMorgan Chase business line increased its assets under management 6.97% last year, to $445 billion, and now has its sights set on developing more assets through banks.

For more information on this data, visit Novantas LLC and Market Rates Insight.

Talk about a generation gap. The 133-year-old broker-dealer Jesup & Lamont, which helped raise money for John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Co., is merging with Tri-Artisan Capital Partners, an eight-year-old merchant bank.

Wilmington Trust Corp. has added 18 wealth managers in the Southeast in the past five months, and says it plans to keep expanding in the region.

Though women are just as optimistic as men about the stock market, they are much less confident about their investment decisions, according to a survey by the retirement division of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co.

Since the Protocol for Broker Recruiting was established in 2004, the practice of firms routinely suing one another when advisers defect has largely faded away.

Wells Fargo & Co., whose previous leader once said investment banking was a bad fit with its consumer culture, is seeking a bigger share of the U.S. equity underwriting business dominated by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Once expected to be casualties of consolidation amid a price war, smaller online brokers are instead thriving.

Legg Mason Inc. applied to run actively managed exchange-traded funds for the first time in its 27-year history as a public company, seeking to capture a slice of the asset management industry's fastest-growing segment.

IMGCAP(1)]

An overwhelming majority of registered voters polled by the Financial Planning Coalition — 83% — said they support increased regulation for financial planners.

VAs may be staging a comeback. The SVP of sales and distribution for Prudential Annuities said he has heard all the objections from wholesalers and advisers: in essence, that the product is too expensive or too complicated.

Invesco Powershares has launched an exchange-traded fund, the CEF Income Composite Portfolio, which tracks yield-oriented, closed-end funds, based on the S-Network Composite Closed-End Fund Index.

Even though overall annuity sales dropped, sales of variable annuities increased 3%, to $32.6 billion in the fourth quarter from the previous quarter, according to Limra International Inc.'s U.S. individual annuities quarterly sales survey. The survey was released Thursday.

Gregory Fleming, the new chief of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, is putting his stamp on the unit by appointing former Merrill Lynch colleague Edmond Moriarty to his leadership team. He has also hired Jeffrey Shames, the former chief executive and chairman of MFS Investment Management.

Though it has been difficult to track just who has driven the record-breaking trading in exchange-traded funds over the past few years, the industry has long known that its investors are a mix of institutional and individual investors.