Oct. 26: Schwab is laying off 1,000workers as it eliminates their roles afterits purchase of TD Ameritrade.
Nov. 13: Former WellsFargo CEO and ChairmanJohn Stumpf and thebank’s ex-head of itsCommunity Bank CarrieTolstedt are charged bythe SEC for their roles inallegedly misleading investorsabout the success of the CommunityBank from 2014–2016. Stumpf hasagreed to pay a $2.5 million penalty.
Nov. 16: Fidelity Institutional rolls
out a wealth management platform.
Fidelity Managed Account Xchange
(FMAX) lets advisors offer a mix
of financial planning services
and managed accounts.
The firm says FMAX is
integrated with eMoney’s
planning and Envestnet’s
managed account tech-
nologies, simplifies con-
tracting, gets rid of some
manual processes and includes
investment solutions from asset
managers and investment consult-
ing from Fidelity.
Portfolio News
Jan. 15: BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, says it is puttingsustainability at the core of its investment strategies and climate-relatedrisk at the center of its proxy votes andengagement with companies in whichit invests. “I believe we are on the edgeof a fundamental reshaping of finance,”says CEO Larry Fink.
Jan. 29: Fidelity is rolling out real-timefractional shares trading for stocks andETFs to DIY investors, ahead of CharlesSchwab. No plan is announced for RIAclients’ accounts, and a spokespersonsays the firm is “gauging demand.”
Feb. 18: Franklin Resources — the parentfirm of fund manager Franklin Templeton— says it is buying Legg Mason in an all-cash deal valued at nearly $4.5 billion.
Combined, the two asset managers haveabout $1.5 trillion in assets. The newscomes as asset managers face competitivethreats from low-cost index products.
April 2: After years of review by
the SEC, the first nontransparent
ETFs come to market from American
Century. The firm, which calls the
products “semi-transparent,” let portfo-
lio managers direct fund assets without
disclosing fund holdings on a daily
basis; in this care, the disclosures will
be made quarterly with a 15-day lag.
April 20: Vanguard abruptly closed its
$39.5 billion Treasury Money MarketFund to new investors after the end ofthe day’s trading. Existing shareholdersof the fund, however, can continue topurchase new shares without limits.
Vanguard said it made the move to protect existing shareholders from highlevels of cash flow that could potentiallyaccelerate declines in the fund’s yield.
It explained that increasing new flowsinto the fund combined with extremelylow Treasury yields could have theeffect of reducing the fund’s yield.
June 10: A Morningstar report notesthat advisors and investors should favorlower cost funds, which tend to performbetter than higher cost funds within thesame asset category, are more likely toexperience bigger inflows and smalleroutflows, and allow more room foradvisors’ own fees if they charge clientsbased on a percentage of their assets.
July 2: Dimensional Fund Advisors
(DFA) plans to launch three active ETFs
later this year in a shift from its strategy
to sell its mutual funds to retail investors
exclusively through financial advisors.
July 28: Wells Fargo files to launchtwo ETFs.
Aug. 10: Dodge & Cox plans to rollout its first mutual fund in over sixyears; the new product focuses onemerging markets.
Aug. 27: Vanguard reopens its $40billion Treasury Money Market Fundand says it will reorganize its $125.3 billion Prime Money Market fund into agovernment money market fund with a$3,000 minimum.
Sept. 25: Vanguard closes two munimoney market funds to new investorsand announces plans to liquidate thesefunds in November, citing “changingmarket dynamics.” The limited supplyof some short-term municipal securitiesmakes it “no longer possible to meet theinvestment objectives and maintain thediversification and risk profile” of thesetwo funds, the firm explains.
Sept. 29: Vanguard says it has converted its Prime Money Market to aCash Reserves Federal Money Marketfund, making it more accessible to retailinvestors. The news is the latest in aseries of shifts affecting money marketfunds more broadly due to near-zeroshort-term rates in the U.S.
Oct. 1: Trian Fund Management is taking a 9.9% stake in both Invesco andJanus Henderson, valued at some $494million and $388 million, respectively.
Oct. 8: Morgan Stanley strikes anagreement to buy money manager EatonVance, which has over $500 billion inassets under management, in a deal withan equity value of roughly $7 billion.
“This transaction further advances ourstrategic transformation by continuing to add more fee-based revenues to
Stumpf:AndrewHarrer/Bloomberg
