Wealth management

American International Group Inc. closed the sales of two business units last week.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management launched a transition management group.

UBS Global Asset Management said its U.S. Pension Fund Fitness Tracker, a quarterly estimate of the overall health of a typical U.S. defined benefit pension plan, shows pension funding ratios increased 6 percentage points during the first quarter, to 84% as of March 31.

Barclays Global Investors, a San Francisco unit of Barclays PLC, hired Stephen Jobe as director of its iShares 529 programs.

Northern Trust Corp. is putting new muscle behind its investment operations outsourcing business to gain scale globally in the wake of the market meltdown.

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

After falling 123 points in February, the Spectrem Millionaire Investor Index rose 8 points in March, to negative 26, returning to a mildly bearish stance, Spectrem Group said.

Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. has introduced an enhanced 401(k) program designed for small and midsize businesses.

Uncertainty in Citizens Financial Group's wealth management arm since the British government's takeover of its parent, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC, was among the reasons a Rhode Island executive says he decided to leave the company to run a smaller book of business at a smaller New England rival.

Bank of America Corp. expects to sell asset manager Columbia Management Group as it tries to preserve capital and divest noncore assets, according to people familiar with the situation in a report Wednesday by Dow Jones.

Putnam Investments of Boston has announced the hiring of Benjamin H. Lewis, a 23-year veteran of the 401(k) business, as managing director of defined contribution sales and relationship management.

Boston Private Financial Holdings Inc.'s chief financial officer said Wednesday it decided to sell a business unit and its stake in another to their management teams because both had shrunk considerably and no longer had a "material impact" on the parent company's bottom line.

If there is a silver lining in the economic crisis that has harmed the financial services industry in recent months, it is that banks are looking far more attractive to a variety of advisers.

New York Life Insurance Co. announced that it was the top provider of guaranteed lifetime income annuities in the United States last year, according to Limra International.

Bank of New York Mellon Corp. has launched the Euro-Pacific Select ADR Index.

The chief operating officer at Jackson National Life Insurance Co. said that he does not expect to add assets this year but remains optimistic that market conditions will improve and the annuity industry will grow in 2010.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch, the investment banking arm of Bank of America Corp., announced Monday that it has added NPD Group, Litigation Notes and 451 Group to Merrill Open Minds, bringing to 10 the number of third-party research providers available on the platform.

PNC Financial Services Group Inc.'s wealth management business plans a hiring blitz to build on the Pittsburgh banking company's $5 billion acquisition of National City Corp. of Cleveland in December.