Eliot Spitzer may have fired the final cannon blast in his 27-month assault on the mutual fund industry. The crusading New York attorney general reached a settlement with Federated Investors last month that required the company to pay $100 million...

Kochis Fitz was once a small financial-planning shop that tried to win clients with $250,000 to invest. But the registered investment advisor has emerged as a leading financial-advisory practice in San Francisco, boasting $1.4 billion under...

The financial advisory world is in flux, and there's no doubt that you are fully aware of changes in the business. But with all the white noise from regulators, financial services companies and the affluent the odds are you're not quite sure what...

Faced with growing competition from other advice providers and fewer inherent advantages in the way of products and platform capabilities, wirehouse brokers will feel pressure to do more fee-based business and to make wealthier clients a bigger...

James Hays has joined Wachovia Securities and will be named president of the firm's Private Client Group in mid-January 2006. Hays succeeds James Donley, who has held the position since September 2003 and earlier this year announced plans to...

Q: I had an oral contract with my partner that I would inherit his $40 million book when he retired in two to three years, but he was laid off in the middle of the transition period and now my branch manager has told me that I won't get the book...

This month, many of us will think that it's time for a fresh start, like a new job then quickly forget about it because we're afraid of all that's involved in making the switch. Brokers have more to worry about than other employees because they...

A bunch of old Citigroup asset managers will soon be without jobs when their funds are folded into Legg Mason funds. After Legg Mason and Citigroup closed their asset swap deal on Dec. 1, Legg announced in a regulatory filing with the SEC that it...

This month's Fix My Business column focuses on an industry veteran who faces what many other successful advisory practioners face: a bulging practice in need of a tune-up to increase efficiency and, as a result, profitability. For advice, we...