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Half of Independent RIAs Add Clients

Advisers are benefitting from growing dissatisfaction with brokerages.

Hedge Funds on Track to Return 6%+ in 2Q

But many investors, particularly institutional investors, are still waiting for reforms before committing new money.

Advisers Succeeded in Gaining 14% for Millionaires in 2008

While millionaires who didn’t work with an adviser lost an average 18% in 2008, those that did lost only 4% of assets.

25% of HNW Investors Bailing on Wealth Managers

They either withdrew assets or closed their accounts in 2008.

Hedge Funds Expect SEC to Revisit Registration

Post-Madoff, funds are also rethinking fees, transparency.

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Articles

Give Fund Managers Back The Power to Pick Stocks And Spot Macro Trends

Finally, insiders launched candid criticism at the mutual fund industry last week, to help it respond sensibly to the economic meltdown and reposition itself to regain investor trust. Foremost among this advice is giving portfolio managers back the power to pick stocks and run with their investment ideas, instead of being so tightly tethered to an investment class and market capitalization. Further, fund managers should step away from their style boxes and take a look at bigger economic trends. The signs were all there, beginning with the 2007 demise of Bear Stearns' credit derivatives-laden hedge funds. Anyone could have foreseen the accelerating problems of the credit and capital markets, mutual fund managers among them. Had more of them moved into cash or safe investments, they would have avoided the across-the-board losses in 2008.

Funds Must Reassess Back-Office Controls

Thanks to shady money managers like Bernie Madoff who ruined it for everyone, the lucrative and surreptitious heydays of hedge funds may be gone for good. Tenacious regulators and spurned investors alike are demanding more transparency of their investment holdings, and hedge fund and mutual fund companies alike will need to beef up their back offices to meet this new demand.

Hedge Funds' Next Act: Internal Audits

Whether driven by the demands of potential or existing investors, regulators or a new strategic direction, hedge fund and private equity firms are moving beyond their historically entrepreneurial outlooks to enhance their operational risk management, financial controls (SOX and SAS 70) and internal audit. Above-average returns in recent years attracted increased attention from institutional investors looking to diversify. Institutional asset flows exceeded $734 billion into hedge funds and $494 billion into private equity funds in 2007. With the onset of the credit crisis and continuing challenging market conditions, alternative asset managers must work harder to retain these clients. The pressures for transparency, further disclosure and greater scrutiny of risk management procedures are mounting.

Executives Cite Risks Of Risk Regulator

PALM DESERT, Calif. - The United States is determined to show the world it is leading global economic recovery efforts, even if that means creating what some in the industry view as risky new risk regulators. Congress has been scrambling for weeks to create a systemic risk regulator before President Barack Obama heads to London this week for the Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, but many financial experts are wondering if the government is rushing too quickly to create new regulations and whether such regulations could have prevented the current financial crisis.

ICI Recommends Capital Markets Regulator, Systemic Risk Regulator

In order to achieve meaningful reform of the financial services industry, Congress should create two key regulatory positions to oversee financial markets, according to a proposal last week by the Investment Company Institute. 'The financial crisis highlights the longstanding need for regulatory reform to develop a more effective framework for overseeing modern financial markets and mitigating risks to the financial system at large,' said ICI President and CEO Paul Schott Stevens. 'Such a framework should, among other things, close regulatory gaps, bolster regulatory expertise and improve interagency coordination.'

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