Wealth management

Wells Fargo Funds Management LLC, the mutual fund arm of the San Francisco financial services company, announced that its fund family's board of trustees has approved an initiative to simplify its fund lineup by merging or eliminating 15 portfolios.

Northern Trust Corp. announced that it has added two portfolio managers to the tax-advantaged equity portfolio management team at its global investments unit.

UBS AG has opened a private wealth management office in San Francisco for high-net-worth clients with assets of more than $10 million.

The marketplace for model portfolios is booming as more banks add unified managed accounts to their product menus.

GMP Capital Trust, an independent securities and investment banking firm in Vancouver, British Columbia, is starting an asset management business.

Bank Asya of Turkey announced that it has selected Bank of New York Mellon Corp. as the depositary bank for its American depositary receipt program.

Citi Property Investors, a unit of Citigroup Inc.'s Citi Alternative Investments, has hired Markus Hofmann to manage its newly established German office.

Morgan Stanley on Monday named a former top executive of Fidelity Investments to run its global wealth management group.

New York Life Insurance Co.'s New York Life International unit hired Vikram Sawhney as a senior vice president of business development and Susan Cartledge as a senior vice president of human resources.

Phoenix Cos. Inc. of Hartford, Conn., promoted Stephen D. Gresham, from executive vice president and director retail markets to senior vice president and director of product management and marketing for asset management.

Northern Trust Global Investments, the investment management arm of Northern Trust Corp. of Chicago, has partnered with Taiwan's First Taisec Capital Management to offer manager-of-managers funds to retail investors in Taiwan.

The same lack of scale that forced Sun Life Financial Inc. of Toronto’s U.S. division to agree to sell its U.S. defined contribution plan administration business prompted Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. to buy it.

BB&T Insurance Services of Raleigh has agreed to buy Ott & Co., an employee benefits insurance brokerage in Alpharetta, Ga.

Since Legg Mason Inc. swapped its brokerage network for Citigroup Inc.'s asset management operations in December 2005, many have assumed that the Baltimore investment manager had abandoned wealth management to focus on product manufacturing.

TIB Financial Corp., a community banking company in Naples, Fla., announced Thursday that it has agreed to buy Naples Capital Advisors and plans to enter private banking and wealth management.

UBS AG has announced the expansion of its Canadian KeyClient Group, which is dedicated to serving ultra-high-net-worth clients.

Northeast Bank Insurance Group Inc., a subsidiary of Lewiston, Maine's Northeast Bancorp, announced Wednesday that it had bought Hyler Agency, an insurance business in Thomaston, Maine.

Boston Private Financial Holdings Inc., which has said for some time that it planned to expand into northern Virginia, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago, and Denver, is widening that plan.