Tremont to close hedge fund unit

Tremont Group Holdings Inc. of New York is closing its hedge fund division following $3.1 billion in losses associated with the Bernie Madoff scandal, according to the firm.

Rye (N.Y.) Investment Management, Tremont’s hedge fund unit, had invested all of its assets in a fund tied to Bernard Madoff Investment Services.

Tremont will retain staff from the Rye division to seek recovery of available assets from a $50 billion Ponzi scheme allegedly perpetrated by Mr. Madoff and his New York-based investment firm.

State Street launches fixed-income ETFs

State Street Global Advisors of Boston today announced the launch of two new fixed-income exchange traded funds: the SPDR Barclays Capital Short Term International Treasury Bond ETF (BWZ) and the SPDR Barclays Capital Mortgage Backed Bond ETF (MBG).

“Recent market volatility has increased demand for fixed-income ETFs that provide efficient and cost-effective exposure to markets that help investors enhance the diversification of their fixed-income holdings,” James Ross, a senior managing director at SSgA, said in a statement.

Lehman offloads two private-equity funds

A Luxembourg investment partnership has agreed to purchase two private-equity funds from the Lehman Brothers Holding Co. bankruptcy estate.

Reinet Fund S.C.A., a wholly owned subsidiary of Reinet Investments S.C.A. in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, will buy the funds from Lehman Brothers Merchant Banking and commit to $230 million to the funds over a three-and-a-half-year period, the firm said.

No further details were provided on the value of the transaction.

Lehman offloads two private-equity funds

A Luxembourg investment partnership has agreed to purchase two private-equity funds from the Lehman Brothers Holding Co. bankruptcy estate.

Reinet Fund S.C.A., a wholly owned subsidiary of Reinet Investments S.C.A. in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, will buy the funds from Lehman Brothers Merchant Banking and commit to $230 million to the funds over a three-and-a-half-year period, the firm said.

No further details were provided on the value of the transaction.

Lehman offloads two private-equity funds

A Luxembourg investment partnership has agreed to purchase two private-equity funds from the Lehman Brothers Holding Co. bankruptcy estate.

Reinet Fund S.C.A., a wholly owned subsidiary of Reinet Investments S.C.A. in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, will buy the funds from Lehman Brothers Merchant Banking and commit to $230 million to the funds over a three-and-a-half-year period, the firm said.

No further details were provided on the value of the transaction.

Breakaway brokers added $13B to Schwab's coffers

Charles Schwab’s added $13 billion of assets from former full-service brokers who set up or joined registered investment adviser firms in 2008, up 41% from the previous year.

The breakaway broker gains represent about 22% of the $60 billion of new assets that all independent advisers brought to Charles Schwab & Co. Inc. last year, according to Bernie Clark, senior vice president and head of sales for the firm’s adviser services business. The assets came from 123 teams of brokers who set up as independent registered investment advisers or who joined existing RIA businesses.

Breakaway brokers added $13B to Schwab's coffers

Charles Schwab’s added $13 billion of assets from former full-service brokers who set up or joined registered investment adviser firms in 2008, up 41% from the previous year.

The breakaway broker gains represent about 22% of the $60 billion of new assets that all independent advisers brought to Charles Schwab & Co. Inc. last year, according to Bernie Clark, senior vice president and head of sales for the firm’s adviser services business. The assets came from 123 teams of brokers who set up as independent registered investment advisers or who joined existing RIA businesses.

Breakaway brokers added $13B to Schwab's coffers

Charles Schwab’s added $13 billion of assets from former full-service brokers who set up or joined registered investment adviser firms in 2008, up 41% from the previous year.

The breakaway broker gains represent about 22% of the $60 billion of new assets that all independent advisers brought to Charles Schwab & Co. Inc. last year, according to Bernie Clark, senior vice president and head of sales for the firm’s adviser services business. The assets came from 123 teams of brokers who set up as independent registered investment advisers or who joined existing RIA businesses.

Breakaway brokers added $13B to Schwab's coffers

Charles Schwab’s added $13 billion of assets from former full-service brokers who set up or joined registered investment adviser firms in 2008, up 41% from the previous year.

The breakaway broker gains represent about 22% of the $60 billion of new assets that all independent advisers brought to Charles Schwab & Co. Inc. last year, according to Bernie Clark, senior vice president and head of sales for the firm’s adviser services business. The assets came from 123 teams of brokers who set up as independent registered investment advisers or who joined existing RIA businesses.

Breakaway brokers added $13B to Schwab's coffers

Charles Schwab’s added $13 billion of assets from former full-service brokers who set up or joined registered investment adviser firms in 2008, up 41% from the previous year.

The breakaway broker gains represent about 22% of the $60 billion of new assets that all independent advisers brought to Charles Schwab & Co. Inc. last year, according to Bernie Clark, senior vice president and head of sales for the firm’s adviser services business. The assets came from 123 teams of brokers who set up as independent registered investment advisers or who joined existing RIA businesses.

Breakaway brokers added $13B to Schwab's coffers

Charles Schwab’s added $13 billion of assets from former full-service brokers who set up or joined registered investment adviser firms in 2008, up 41% from the previous year.

The breakaway broker gains represent about 22% of the $60 billion of new assets that all independent advisers brought to Charles Schwab & Co. Inc. last year, according to Bernie Clark, senior vice president and head of sales for the firm’s adviser services business. The assets came from 123 teams of brokers who set up as independent registered investment advisers or who joined existing RIA businesses.

Madoff to reveal personal assets

Fallen money manager Bernard Madoff is scheduled to submit a list of his personal assets to the Securities and Exchange Commission today, a move which could pave the way for his alleged victims to retrieve some of their money, according to published reports.

The former chairman of New York-based Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., who has been accused by federal prosecutors of orchestrating a $50 billion Ponzi scheme involving numerous individual and institutional investors, was required by a federal judge to provide the SEC with a list of personal assets, including property, by today.

Study: Hasty Lehman bankruptcy burned $75B

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s filing for bankruptcy protection in September destroyed as much as $75 billion of potential value to creditors, according to an internal analysis by the company's restructuring advisers cited in today's Wall Street Journal.

If the company hadn’t rushed into a Chapter 11 filing, it likely would have preserved tens of billions of dollars of value, according to a study by Alvarez & Marsal Holdings LLC, a New York-based management consulting firm.

Welcome drop in jobless claims ends year

The number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits fell sharply last week.

First time jobless claims fell by 94,000 for the week ended Dec. 27, the Department of Labor reported today.

Initial filings for first-time unemployment benefits dipped to 492,000 last week from the 26-year high of 586,000 for the week ended Dec. 20.

The Labor department cited seasonal volatility in explaining the drop.

Economists surveyed by Chicago-based Briefing.com Inc. were expecting jobless claims to slip to 575,000.

Fed picks 4 for MBS purchase program

The Federal Reserve has hired BlackRock, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, PIMCO and Wellington Management to purchase a total of up to $500 billion of mortgage-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae, a Fed statement said.

The managers would employ “a passive buy-and-hold investment strategy in accordance with investment guidelines prescribed by the Federal Reserve,” according to the release.

Advisers' spirits rise as year ends

Advisers’ confidence in the economy and the stock market improved for the second consecutive month in December, according to Rydex AdvisorBenchmarking’s Advisor Confidence Index.

The index rose 2% in December to 83.57, from 82.46 in November.

Three of the four economic outlook components measured by the index improved: the current economic outlook by 3.78%, the six-month economic outlook by 0.82%, and the stock market outlook by 4.73%.

Consumer confidence tumbles

The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index fell to a reading of 38 in December, down from 44.7 in November and matching the record low set in October.

Economists surveyed by Briefing.com Inc. of Chicago were expecting the index to fall to 45.5.

“The further erosion of the Consumer Confidence Index reflects the rapid and steep deterioration of economic conditions that occurred in the fourth quarter of 2008,” Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board Consumer Research Center, said in a statement.

SEC enforcement accountant Markel to depart

The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced that its chief accountant for the Division of Enforcement, Susan G. Markel, will leave the agency next month.

After departing the SEC, she will become a managing director in the corporate-investigations practice of AlixPartners LLP, in the Southfield, Mich., headquarters of the global business advisory firm.

Ms. Markel’s tenure at the SEC dates back to 1994 when she was a staff accountant in the Division of Enforcement before being named associate chief accountant in 2000 and chief accountant in 2003.

GLG to hold off on dividend

GLG Partners yesterday announced that it will temporarily stop paying a quarterly dividend.

“We have decided at this time that it is prudent to retain capital rather than continue paying a regular quarterly dividend. We see tremendous value in the added flexibility of retaining cash in the current environment,” Noam Gottesman, chairman and co-CEO, said in a news release.

The hedge fund manager’s board of directors could re-establish the practice or pay a special dividend when warranted, the release added.

Vanguard to leave Pershing and self-clear

Vanguard Brokerage Services, the broker-dealer unit of The Vanguard Group Inc., is ending its decade-long relationship with Pershing LLC and will self-clear its trades, according to Amy Chain, a spokeswoman for the fund manager.

Malvern, Pa.-based VBS is expected to begin its own trade processing by the middle of the year, with some visible changes, such as new account numbers for clients, showing up by the end of May.

Paulson: 'Aggressive intervention' unavoidable

Looking back as he prepares to end his term as Treasury secretary in three weeks, Henry Paulson Jr. said that he feared that the world financial system faced a meltdown on three occasions in the past six months.

The first such instance was in August, when he realized that mortgage giants Fannie Mae of Washington and Freddie Mac of McLean, Va. were in serious trouble, he said in an interview with Financial Times.

The second occasion took place in mid-September, when Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. of New York collapsed and several other financial institutions teetered on the brink of failure.

Home prices decline at record pace

Home prices in the 20 largest U.S. cities fell 18% in October, a record year-over-year decline.

The Case-Shiller home price index, released today by Standard & Poor's of New York, was down 2.2% from September.

Fourteen of the 20 metropolitan areas posted declines in excess of 10% compared with the year-earlier period.

Case-Shiller's 10-city index posted a record 19.1% decline from October 2007 and was off 3.6% from September.

Mortgage applications unchanged for week

The volume of residential mortgage applications was essentially unchanged for the week ended Dec. 26, even as the interest rates charged on mortgages continued to decline, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association of Washington.

The Market Composite Index, a measure of loan application volume, was 1,245.7 last week, up incrementally from a seasonally adjusted reading 1,245.4 the week earlier.

The week's results included an adjustment that accounted for the shortened week due to the Christmas holiday.