Wealth management

Grail Advisors LLC, a San Francisco investment manager, launched two actively managed exchange-traded funds.

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

The BNY Mellon Asset Management unit of Bank of New York Mellon Corp. has combined its money market mutual fund and short-duration fixed-income businesses into a new unit called BNY Mellon Cash Investment Strategies.

Umpqua Holdings Corp.'s new asset management unit may soon find that even a local bank will have a hard time getting people to invest during the current economic climate.

The Jefferies & Co. unit of Jefferies Group Inc. has hired Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. veterans, Daniel Markaity and Christopher Bury, as co-heads of its fixed-income rates business.

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Nomura Asset Management Co. Ltd. of Tokyo has added a fund family, the Nomura Partners Funds.

American Century Investments has hired a pair of portfolio managers from Lehman Brothers.

Gibraltar Private Bank and Trust, a Coral Gables, Fla., mortgage banking, private banking, and wealth management unit of Boston Private Financial Holdings Inc., hired Jonathan Wolfe as a senior vice president and chief operations officer.

Royal Bank of Canada said it has opened RBC Brasil DTVM, a Brazilian investment advisory unit.

Fidelity Investments said it has put James Catudal, who already manages three of its funds, in charge of the $6.24 billion Fidelity Growth and Income Portfolio Fund, succeeding Timothy M. Cohen.

John Hancock Funds, a unit of Manulife Financial Corp. of Toronto, has acquired a large-cap value fund from Robeco Boston Partners and renamed it the John Hancock Disciplined Value Fund.

Vanguard Group of Valley Forge, Pa., will distribute 32 of its U.S.-registered exchange-traded funds through JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s depositary receipts group for trading on Bolsa Mexicana de Valores, the international segment of the Mexican Stock Exchange.

The new top executive at RBC Direct Investing, Royal Bank of Canada's discount brokerage arm, said further contraction in the field should help his unit continue to expand in Canada and possibly in other markets.

UMB Healthcare Services, a division of UMB Financial Corp. of Kansas City, Mo., announced that its health spending account total has exceeded 1 million.

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP has acquired the U.S. operations of Sustainable Finance Ltd., an advisory firm focused on environmental and social risk management in the financial sector.

Deciding where wealth management clients should put their money this year is a daunting business, but investment executives at some banking companies seem to wholeheartedly agree on where it should not go: into Treasury bills.

The majority of independent advisers still expect to increase assets and develop new business this year, despite difficult market conditions, according to a survey SEI Investments Co. of Oaks, Pa., released last week.