In this section we present key findings and insights from our survey questions on practice management and operations, including services offered, the most time-consuming activities, professional designations, custody relationships and documentation trends.
Despite current laws that reduce the estate-tax bite, survivorship life insurance is making a comeback as an estate-planning tool among some advisors. With Democrats in control of Congress, and a good chance that a Democrat will take the White...
In July 2007, his firm, Bear Stearns, announced that two of its flagship hedge funds had collapsed. Not surprisingly, clients weren't too happy about that. Many of Sharon's clients contacted him to express grievances about their losses, and...
Johnne Syverson, co-founder of RIA firm Syverson Strege & Company, in West Des Moines, Iowa, has been outsourcing money-manager selection and portfolio construction to SEI since 1995. The firm, which manages $300 million in assets, has three CFAs...
Below is the transcript of an affidavit from a case in which Bear Stearns attempted to impose a temporary restraining order on departed broker Doug Sharon. Sharon left for Morgan Stanley on March 17 the day after J.P. Morgan made a deal to buy the...
New York City's Independent Budget Office estimates that the city could lose over 20,000 jobs in the financial sector over the next two years as the mortgage credit crisis squeezes Wall Street profits. New York Stock Exchange member firms that...
Are closed-end fund preferred-auction securities safe? We consider CFPs to be the conservative's conservative security. Defaults are even rarer than failed auctions. We are comfortable with the safety of auction securities from closed-end funds...
While Smith Barney tries its darnedest to hold on to the money of wealthy clients that were invested in two of the firms’ failing hedge funds (subscription required), it’s also having a hard time keeping some of its best brokers. With...
Bank of America posted a whopping 77-percent drop in first quarter net income today, down to $1.21 billion, or 23 cents a share. The sharp drop in earnings was the result of $1.9 billion in write-downs for the quarter—$1.47 billion on...
Citigroup reported a net loss of $5.1 billion or $1.02 per share, $0.07 per share worse than consensus analyst expectations, according to Thomson Financial. Unlike, say, Merrill Lynch, Smith Barney’s Global Wealth Management unit (retail...
