Boston-based firm characterizes so-called infrastructure fee as solution to ‘broken’ business model
.. By marking the charge as an infrastructure fee, the fund firms may be able to avoid disclosing it to investors... Fund companies that decline to pay the amount will “be subject to a very limited relationship” with the company, the document says. Funds can either pay the fee themselves or push the cost onto investors in the mutual fund. This can increase the overall fees of a fund, causing individual investors to pay more and dent returns... The fee is calculated as 0.15% of a mutual-fund company’s industrywide assets, not just on the dollar amount of assets held by Fidelity customers buying shares on the platform, the document says.The infrastructure fee appears to be a way for Fidelity to make up for revenue the firm has lost as a result of investors flocking to reduced-cost mutual funds, a situation the firm refers to in the document as “unsustainable economics.” Fidelity also stated in the document that its traditional business model is “broken” and characterized the infrastructure fee as a solution to that problem.
.. The infrastructure fee is levied on lower-cost share classes such as those aimed at retirement accounts. The Labor Department has jurisdiction over retirement accounts that are subject to extra protections and disclosures under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or Erisa.
.. The document outlining the infrastructure fee, “Fidelity FundsNetwork Business & Services Guide,” is “not to be distributed to the public as sales material in oral or written form,” and “may not be shared with any third party.”
.. When a fund pays a fee that aims to result in the sale of fund shares, either directly or indirectly, securities laws require it to be part of what is known as a 12b-1 plan and to be disclosed to investors. Many lower-cost fund share classes don’t have 12b-1 plans—a reason why they are cheaper.
.. The Fidelity infrastructure fee is also the subject of a lawsuit filed last week in a Massachusetts federal court by a participant in a retirement plan offered by T-Mobile US, Inc. In that suit, the plaintiff contends that the infrastructure charge is prohibited under Erisa and that Fidelity incentivizes mutual funds on its platform to “conceal the true nature of fees associated with these funds.”
Why Corporations Are Helping Donald Trump Lie About Jobs
Masayoshi Son, wants the Department of Justice’s antitrust division and the Federal Communications Commission to allow a merger between Sprint and T-Mobile. In 2014 regulators appointed by President Obama made clear to Mr. Son that they would not approve such a transaction because it would cut the number of national wireless companies to three, from four, greatly reducing competition in a concentrated industry. Mr. Son sees a new opening for his deal in Mr. Trump, who has surrounded himself with people who have sided with large telecommunications companies in regulatory debates and have argued against tough antitrust enforcement.
.. This is crony capitalism, with potentially devastating consequences. If Mr. Trump appoints people to the antitrust division and the F.C.C. who are willing to wave through a Sprint/T-Mobile merger, he will do lasting damage to the economy that far outweighs any benefit from 5,000 jobs, jobs that might have been created even without the merger. Individuals and businesses will find wireless service costs a lot more when they have only Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile/Sprint to choose from.
In addition, a combined Sprint and T-Mobile would inevitably cut thousands of jobs as executives merge the companies’ networks, stores, billing systems, customer service departments and so on.
.. It has become abundantly clear that Mr. Trump is easily distracted by shiny objects, especially if they reflect back on him. He’s more interested in boasting about how he personally saved a thousand jobs at Carrier, say, than in policy details that could make a difference in the lives of tens of millions of workers. Never mind that Carrier is only keeping about 800 jobs and that its chief executive said that the company would get rid of some of those anyway through automation.