Wealth management

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.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. dropped its lawsuit against seven former executives at its private wealth management division who resigned this month to join a unit of rival investment bank Credit Suisse Group AG.

IMGCAP(1)]

Cambridge Investment Research's 1,600 financial advisers are independent contractors who run their own businesses, but legislation introduced in both the House and Senate is threatening that business model.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority wants to expand the scope of its Broker Check service to better protect consumers from rogue brokers.

Fidelity Investments says it expects its retirement assets to continue growing this year as both employers and employees become more engaged with 401(k) plans.

While many financial advisers continue to seek either the comforts of a megafirm or the independence of a registered investment advisory group, Adam Sherman, David Fleisher and their team have found a cozy home in the community banking channel.

Fidelity Investments may possess the largest supermarket of mutual funds, with $3.2 trillion of assets under administration and $1.5 trillion under management — but it's no longer just about offering a wide selection of mutual funds or getting companies set up with retirement benefits programs.