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PIMCO said its assets under management have exceeded $1 trillion for the first time. The fund finished December with assets of $1.0001 trillion, up from $941 billion at the end of the third quarter. (Reuters)
Charles Schwab Investment Management has launched two new exchange-traded funds focusing on emerging markets and on international small-cap equities. (plansponsor)
Colonial First State froze a $785 million mortgage income fund to withdrawals. Colonial, Australia's biggest asset manager, said there were signs a small number of commercial property loans could sour. (Bloomberg)
Brevan Howard Asset Management's largest listed fund traded at a premium for the first time since the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. BH Macro, an exchange-traded version of Brevan's flagship fund, traded at 1.6% above net asset value. (Bloomberg)
PIMCO said it sees value in Asian debt this year as investors divert money from domestic and European markets toward emerging markets. Koyo Ozeki, head of Asia-Pacific research for PIMCO, said sovereign and utility bonds were attractive in Indonesia and the Philippines. (Bloomberg)
SEC chairman Mary Schapiro and Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein have both said broker/dealers and investment advisors should be subject to the same fiduciary standard when providing the same services. “When investors receive similar services from similar financial servicer providers, it is critical that the service providers be subject to a uniform fiduciary standard of conduct that is at least as strong as exists under the Investment Advisers Act [of 1940], and equivalent regulatory requirements, regardless of the label attached to the service providers,” Schapiro said. (InvestmentNews)
TFS Market Neutral Fund said it is introducing a "hard close" and will stop taking investments on January 22. The fund's assets under management more than doubled to nearly $1 billion in 2009. (InvestmentNews)
Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management head Sallie Krawcheck said some broker attrition has taken place at the firm but not as much as the industry believes. “We’ve seen some [attrition], but not as much as we would have expected,” Krawcheck said. (InvestmentNews)
ETF Securities new platinum and palladium exchange-traded funds garnered a total of $83 million in the first day's trading session. Just under 700,000 shares traded.
Global X Management has launched a new China-focused exchange-traded fund. The Global X China Materials ETF tries to replicate the S-BOX China Materials Index.
Back when the 1970 amendments to the Investment Company Act were written, a divided Congress said investors could sue funds over fees but didn't say much that made sense about adequate grounds for bringing suit. The Securities and Exchange Commission wanted the right to sue to be in the bill. Industry people wanted to make it as hard as possible to do so--and they succeeded. Supreme Court justices, as they listened to oral arguments in the case of Jones v. Harris Associates, tried to figure out what to do about section 36b of the ICA, which creates a fiduciary duty on the part of fund advisors “with respect to the receipt of compensation for services.” After the oral arguments, Nov. 2, the guessing was that, rather than plunge 8,000 fund firms into litigation, the high court would go 6-3 for continuing the Gartenberg standard. But some lawyers thought the Court could come up with a change to add to Gartenberg, directing that district courts must, in the future, make a determination as to whether or not it is valid to compare the fees an advisor charges to funds under its control to the amounts it charges independent clients.
For a full transcript from the Jones v. Harris Supreme Court oral arguments, click here.