Fidelity Investments

Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services last week announced a cloud-based virtual-desktop offering for financial advisers — the first of the four major custodians to do so.

The financial crisis may have wreaked havoc on people's portfolios, but it strengthened their relationship with financial advisers. Advisers are more trusted by investors than banks, insurance companies, investment firms and the government, according to an online survey of 1,150 investors by

Fido late last week substantially expanded its roster of commission-free ETFs. But some advisers are already criticizing the move. Jason Kephart reports.

Fidelity Investments is the latest discount-brokerage firm to make a big move to embrace exchange-traded funds. The company is more than doubling the number of ETFs that financial advisers can trade commission-free to 65, from 30. All the ETFs available commission-free on Fidelity's platform are

Fidelity Investments, the second-largest U.S. mutual fund company, said that operating income fell 29% last year as fee pressure, low interest rates and redemptions from its active equity funds hurt revenue. Earnings, excluding costs such as interest and taxes, decreased to $2.3 billion, from $3.3

Bank of America Corp. has hired Jeffrey K. Cimini, former president of Fidelity Investments Life Insurance Co., to oversee Merrill Lynch's retirement products strategy.

Bank of America Corp. has hired Jeffrey K. Cimini, former president of Fidelity Investments Life Insurance Co., to oversee the wirehouse's retirement products strategy.In the newly created post, Mr. Cimini will be a managing director and head of personal retirement at Bank of America's Global

The fee war among exchange-traded funds has spread to index funds. Fidelity Investments announced that it is lowering fees on eight of its Spartan index funds as well as the investment minimums for all 14 of its index funds. The fee cuts range from 1 to 8 basis points. Current shareholders,

A big-time adviser affiliated with LPL Financial LLC said last week that he is taking $1.2 billion in custodial assets elsewhere but is working to stick with the firm's latest technology and research offerings.

A lot of positive developments probably went unnoticed early this month by advisers due to the catastrophe caused by Hurricane Sandy.

Bob Oros has been on the job since January as executive vice president and head of sales and relationship management at Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services.