At the bell

Total client assets at The Charles Schwab Corp. of San Francisco last month dropped 11%, to $1.16 trillion, and were down 22% from a year earlier.

Schwab’s client assets shrink by 11%

Total client assets at The Charles Schwab Corp. of San Francisco last month dropped 11%, to $1.16 trillion, and were down 22% from a year earlier.

Hartford applies to become an S&L

The Hartford (Conn.) Financial Services Group Inc. said it has applied to the Office of Thrift Supervision to become a savings and loan holding company and has applied to participate in the Department of the Treasury’s Capital Purchase Program.
Hartford has also signed an agreement to buy Sanford, Fla.-based Federal Trust Corp. for about $10 million.

Fidelity to cut 1,700 jobs in 1Q

Fidelity Investments of Boston said Friday that it will cut 1,700 jobs in the first quarter in a second round of layoffs.
The total number of job cuts will be 3,000, representing 7% of the firm’s work force.

Kashkari: Treasury to float 20 more banks

The Department of the Treasury will soon approve capital injections into 20 more banks, said Neel Kashkari, the interim assistant secretary of the Treasury.
He made the remarks to the press Friday after testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s domestic policy subcommittee, according to Bloomberg.

Nobel winner Krugman praises bailout bill

Since the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act was passed Oct. 3, the economic picture remains “spectacularly murky,” but financial services indicators are looking “better than they did one month ago,” Paul Krugman, the winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science, said at a press conference Friday.

Corrections

The article “National Financial Partners and its firms struggle” that appeared in the Nov. 10 issue contained several errors. New York-based NFP’s third-quarter earnings fell 68.3% to $5.1 million, not $4.1 million. Firms or principals that partner with NFP share a percentage of profit, not revenue, with the company. John T. Cash III, a principal, has exercised his last batch of NFP option grants but hasn’t sold the shares.

In the Nov. 10 issue that featured separately managed account data, the location of Lazard Asset Management LLC in the chart for international equity should have been listed as New York. In the domestic equity chart, Security Capital Research & Management Inc. and Invesco Aim Management Group Inc. should have been listed as based in Chicago and Houston, respectively.