Wealth management

The St. Louis investment firm Scottrade Inc. is opening a branch today in North Las Vegas, Nev.

A Manning & Napier Advisors Inc. mutual fund beat the Standard & Poor's 500 for the 10th consecutive year, extending the longest current streak against the index by a U.S. mutual fund.

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ING Group NV split up its U.S. wealth management business to put the company in position to increase assets under management when the economy eventually recovers, but analysts remain skeptical that anyone in the industry will grow in the near term.

Advisers' confidence in the economy and stock market improved in December, according to Rydex AdvisorBenchmarking.

Wealth management advisers already were losing distinctiveness before 2008's Wall Street meltdown; most players offered a near-limitless array of investment products at increasingly similar fee structures.

Univest Insurance Inc., a unit of Univest Corp. in Souderton, Pa., has announced the purchase of Liberty Benefits Inc., a full-service employee benefits brokerage and consulting firm specializing in comprehensive employee benefits packages for businesses with two to 500 employees.

Dune Capital Management LP is leading an investor team, which includes the private-equity adviser J. Christopher Flowers and the hedge fund Paulson & Co. Inc., applying for IndyMac Bancorp's assets and deposits.

Most 401(k) plan participants have continued to invest for retirement despite difficult market conditions, according to the Investment Company Institute.

The key life and health and property/casualty subsidiaries of Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. have been removed from a review with negative implications by A.M. Best Co., the Oldwick, N.J., rating agency that also affirmed the A-plus financial strength ratings and AA-minus issuer credit ratings of the Hartford units.

The Blackstone Group said Tuesday that it is making several changes, including liquidation of hedge funds with insufficient scale, in the single-manager hedge funds businesses within its marketable alternative asset management segment.

A record 344 hedge funds were liquidated in the third quarter, according to data from Hedge Fund Research.

A recession and a new president did not dissuade SunTrust Banks Inc. from announcing in mid-December that it was getting into the health savings account business.

State Street Corp. has introduced 15 exchange-traded funds this year and says it will start more in 2009 despite a large, industrywide decline in ETF assets through the first 11 months of this year.

A Fidelity Investments platform for brokers leaving their jobs at full-service firms could help bolster the ranks of independent brokers, observers say.

CRC Insurance Services Inc., BB&T Corp.'s wholesale insurance unit, announced that it has agreed to acquire TAPCO Underwriters Inc. of Burlington, N.C.

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United Community Financial Corp. in Youngstown, Ohio, announced Friday that it has agreed to sell all the outstanding capital stock of Butler Wick & Co. Inc., the securities arm of Butler Wick Corp., to Stifel Financial Corp. in St. Louis.

BB&T Insurance Services announced Thursday that it has a deal to buy J. Rolfe Davis Insurance in Maitland, Fla.