CVC To Keep Staff At BGI?

In this column by Kathleen Pender of the San Francisco Chronicle, Barclays Global Investors' impending deal with European private equity player CVC Capital Partners is reviewed. BGI insists that the new parent won't slash current staffing levels. 

But others aren't so sure, figuring that CVC will streamline operations and unload it during the next bull market. Just a thought ... what if that turns out to be fairly soon? Private equity firms can move fast ... but later this year or even next would seem awfully fast, even for the most optimistic and aggressive speculator. 

You can read the column here.

Bogle Takes On Institutional Money Managers

Vanguard founder John Bogle is raising an interesting point these days.

As noted in this New York Times column by Gretchen Morgenson, the indexing pioneer is pointing out that much of Wall Street's excesses resulting in a real estate boom and ongoing credit crisis can be traced to institutional money managers feeding the frenzy for cheap credit and leveraged financial instruments. 

You can read the column here.

More Financial Advisers Using ETFs

The latest Financial Research Corp. survey asked advisers about their uses of ETFs. According to this story in the Wall Street Journal, some 71% said they were using ETFs by the end of 2008 -- up from around 25% five years ago. 

It would be interesting to learn how FRC is categorizing advisers. Many other such surveys have found much lower adoption rates by a broad cross-section of financial advisers, including both wires services as well as independent fee-only and commission professionals. 

You can read the WSJ story here.

Bill Gross Raises U.S. Holdings

Bond mutual fund manager Bill Gross increased his stake in U.S. issues during March to the highest level in two years, according to this Bloomberg News story. That was through the $144 billion Pimco Total Return Fund (PTTAX).

You can read the story here.