Wealth management

Having liquidated a money market fund in the meltdown, Utendahl Capital Management now plans to launch a money market-like fund with a floating net asset value.

Morgan Stanley was accused in a lawsuit Tuesday of defrauding investors in a collateralized debt obligation, called the Libertas CDO, by collaborating with ratings companies to get AAA ratings for the notes.

Former clients of Lehman Brothers' European operations voted for a plan to speed up the return of about $11 billion in frozen client assets, the collapsed bank's European administrator, PricewaterhouseCoopers, said Tuesday.

At least one upside to the financial crisis is that it has most likely turned people between the ages of 18 and 25 into lifelong savers, much as it affected young people who lived during the Great Depression, according to a report by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

With investor demand for fixed income expected to remain positive into 2010 and flows into equities showing signs of life, asset management firms are poised for growth, making them attractive targets for acquisitions, according to a new Keefe, Bruyette & Woods Inc. report.

Vanguard Group distinguished itself this year despite — or perhaps because of — difficult market conditions.

Advisor Software Inc. of Lafayette, Calif., has bought the registered investment adviser Advisor Partners LLC of Lafayette.

Van Eck Global has used municipal bond exchange-traded funds to make a name for itself in the tax-exempt investment arena, and the firm sees more growth ahead.

Just a heads-up if you are a struggling bank that owns a mutual fund family — Bruce Crockett, the chairman of Invesco's Aim Funds, may have it in his sights.

Just a heads-up if you are a struggling bank that owns a mutual fund family — Bruce Crockett may have it in his sights.

The Lansing, Mich., subsidiary of Prudential PLC in London, said last week that it had promoted Laura Prieskorn, 41, to senior vice president and chief administrative officer, and J. Mark Clark, 49, to senior vice president and chief information officer.

The Vanguard Explorer Value Fund, which will be available to investors in January, will be fundamentally managed and will specialize in small- to mid-cap U.S. value stocks, the Valley Forge, Pa., company said on Monday.

The SEC alleged in a filing last week that Kurt B. Barton and Triton Financial LLC raised more than $8.4 million from about 90 investors by selling "investor units" in an affiliate, Triton Insurance, and telling investors that their money would be used to buy an insurance company.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. has announced the purchase of Portsmouth Financial Systems, a developer of modeling and analytics for structured credit transactions, so that it can give clients and investors more transparency in structured credit portfolios.

Wachovia Securities has been ordered to pay $1.1 million in attorneys' fees and costs after an arbitration panel dismissed its latest claim of raiding against the St. Louis brokerage Stifel Nicolaus & Co.

State Street Corp. has agreed with Intesa Sanpaolo, a Milan banking company, to buy its securities services business for $1.87 billion in cash.

Morgan Stanley ranks No. 1 in M&A fees so far this year and could knock Goldman Sachs Group Inc. off the top position it has dominated over recent years, according to a study released Monday by Mergermarket.

The Minneapolis company said it expects to close its purchase of Advisory Research Inc. in the first quarter in a cash-and-stock deal valued at $218 million.

Overall, faith-based investing is a growing, $31 billion, 100-mutual-fund branch of socially responsible investing, a $2.71 trillion marketplace in the United States.

Morgan Stanley Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Mack will not accept a bonus for 2009, which may be the first year in which the firm reports an annual per-share loss as a public company.