Wealth management

Incapital LLC's plan to buy the LaSalle broker-dealer services division from Bank of America Corp. would give the Chicago underwriter a two-thirds share of the retail corporate bond business, but more importantly perhaps, it is a chance to sell fixed-income products to individual investors just as they have started looking for these products.

Shares of Washington Mutual Inc., the embattled Seattle thrift company that lost big on bad mortgage bets last year, have rebounded some this year, but Robert Lacoursiere, an analyst at Banc of America Securities, said takeover speculation has given the stock an artificial boost.

Incapital LLC, a Boca Raton, Fla., corporate bond manager, said Monday it plans to acquire Bank of America Corp.'s LaSalle Broker Dealer Services division.

UBS Global Asset Management is hoping a set of mutual funds with a guaranteed lifetime income option will help its new defined contribution business take off.

Nationwide Financial Services Inc. said its fourth-quarter earnings declined 53% from a year earlier, to $74.2 million, or 52 cents a share, because of investment losses and the planned sale of a stake in a distribution business.

State Street Corp. and Boston Financial Data Services, its joint venture with DST Systems Inc. that provides transfer agency services, were selected to provide investment services to Fifth Third Funds.

Uruguay's central bank has selected Bank of New York Mellon Corp.'s global asset servicing arm as the global custodian for the bank's $4.5 billion investment portfolio.

Northern Trust Corp. said it has expanded its global fund services team to address a growing demand for middle- and back-office services for fund complexes and investment management clients.

JPMorgan Private Bank promoted Rebecca Patterson to global head of foreign exchange.

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PowerShares Capital Management LLC, a Chicago exchange-traded fund company, has announced plans to start a PowerShares India Portfolio.

Dreyfus Corp., the New York mutual fund arm of Bank of New York Mellon Corp., said Thursday that Thomas Eggers will retire March 31 as its president and chief executive officer.

Confidence among affluent investors has dropped to its all-time lowest level as measured by the Spectrem Group's four-year-old Affluent Investor Index, which tumbled 13 points in January.

More investment managers are starting long-short funds with hedge fund-like properties, showing that financial services firms have not given up on developing new products in spite of difficult market conditions and criticism from some quarters.

Attorneys for Bank of New York Mellon Corp. filed a motion in a Russian court Wednesday claiming that a lawyer for the Russian customs service falsified evidence in a $22.5 billion lawsuit against the company.

The U.S. division of Sun Life Financial Inc. of Toronto said that it plans to consolidate its distribution arm and that Kevin Hart, the president of Sun Life Financial Distributors Inc., will leave March 31.

The Boston money manger MFS Investment Management has launched the MFS Diversified Target Return Fund.

ING Funds reappointed Bank of New York Mellon Corp.'s BNY Mellon Asset Servicing as the global custodian for about $117 billion of assets.