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The article discusses the growing importance of wealth management as a lucrative and attractive business within the financial industry. The rise of technology and artificial intelligence (AI) is also reshaping the industry, with larger firms having an advantage in implementing AI tools. Major players like Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and UBS are seeking even greater scale and expanding their wealth management services to cater to a broader clientele.

The article considers retirement finance. The impact of the large change from corporate defined benefit pension plans to defined contribution plans which leave retirees with a fixed sum for further investment is discussed. Investment products offered by the financial services industry to retirees and as part of retirement planning are examined including target-date funds, balanced funds and absolute return funds.

The article explains the need to reform the Japanese public pension system as the population of older people increases. The Financial Services Agency (FSA) has raised a debate on how to support the aging population through better retirement planning. The Japanese people are urged to allocate more funds for their retirement and to make more adventurous investments.

The article reveals that a growing number of people in the U.S. are including their pets in their financial plans.

The article offers advice to investors on how to use financial technology. They include saving money for a distant, uncertain future, using a statistical model to determine which pension will be needed at retirement, and choosing a strategy that avoids incessant trading. Also mentioned are return on investment, asset allocation, and encouraging behaviour that leads to long-term success.

The author offers opinions on corporate finance and management. Business forecasting is presented to support the contention that the primary need for corporations in 2010 will be to place increased emphasis on long-term planning, abandoning the focus on short-term strategies for maximizing profits which contributed to the global financial crisis.

The article reports that London, England, will stage the 30th Olympiad in 2012, becoming the first city to host the games for a third time. The real question is whether hosting the Olympics will actually be good for Londoners. Past experience and current plans suggest that London 2012 might not be. Parts of London's plan are undoubtedly wise. The problems start with the site of the Olympic complex. The main stadium and the athletes' village will be laid out in the Lower Lea Valley, a wasteland three miles east of London's financial district that is scarred by car-breakers' yards and derelict factories. All this will have to be cleaned up before any building starts. Also, the site often floods. The games will cost a lot. Few Olympics make money once you count the cost of such things as permanent stadiums and new transport links. To reduce the risk of an expensive mess, London needs to avoid three traps. The first is a habit of mismanaging big public projects, delivering them late and over-budget. Second, London's mayor, Ken Livingstone, must be prevented from using the Olympics as a way to extract money from the government for his pet projects. Third, between now and 2012 there will be the inevitable souring of the elation at winning the bid.

The article focuses on the business plan of Roberto Colaninno, the new managing director of information-technology firm Olivetti SpA in Italy. His plans include the revival of the company's finances by raising 800 billion lire through disposals before 1996 ends, considering that the firm had lost 3.9 trillion lire between 1991 and 1995. The firm anticipates to make money by shedding its 47.9% interest in Tecnost, a quoted specialist hardware maker, and the whole of Olivetti Personal Computers.

The article discusses financial planning for retirement income, with a focus on pension plans and the financial aspects of a defined-contribution (DC) plan. Topics include a comparison of DC schemes to final-salary pension plans, the purchase of annuities in Great Britain, and the role of inflation in retirement income planning.

The author offers opinions on financial literacy and the study and teaching of personal finance. Citing research on financial education finding that it had limited influence on consumer behavior, the author argues that the complexity of financial planning and the differing financial needs of individuals makes it difficult to create curricula applicable to large numbers of consumers. Better education in mathematics is recommended.

The article presents the author's views regarding economic forecasting for 2013, with a focus on socioeconomic variables in financial planning and analysis. Topics include economic theories of risk management; unpredictability in economic systems susceptible to the effects of rare events, or "fat tails;" and suggestions for decreasing the volatility of economic systems.

The article examines research in behavioral economics on personal finance. Economists Ulrike Malmendier and Stefan Nagel have found that individual's expectations of future economic conditions and their personal financial choices are strongly affected by the economic conditions they experienced earlier in life. This contradicts traditional economic theory.

The article discusses pension schemes that are automatic, forcing the worker to opt out rather than opt in. Governments are anxious to limit the load on already stressed tax-financed pension systems. But left to their own devices, many workers do not save enough for their retirement, if they save at all. At present, most workers have to opt in to retirement-saving plans. With automatic enrollment, they have to opt out. Behavioral finance shows the surprising extent to which people are swayed by the way that choices are framed. What this suggests is that re-framing decisions about retirement saving through better-designed default rules can be surprisingly effective. Automatic enrollment puts the onus on the worker to opt out rather than to opt in. A study of one firm by Richard Thaler and Shlomo Benartzi has shown that pre-commitment by workers to allocate a portion of their future pay rises to their pensions raised their average contribution rate from 3.5% of pay to 13.6% over a 40-month period.

The article looks at housing prices and questions whether it is better to rent or to buy a house. House prices are at record levels in relation to rents in many parts of the world and it now often makes more financial sense--especially for first-time buyers--to rent instead. Once maintenance costs, insurance and property taxes are added to mortgage payments, total annual outgoings now easily exceed the cost of renting an equivalent property, even after taking account of tax breaks. Making the assumption that house prices rise in line with inflation, and including buying and selling costs, then over a period of seven years--the average time American owners stay in one house--our calculations show that you would generally be better off renting. A renter can accumulate wealth by putting the money saved each year from the lower cost of renting into shares. These have, historically, yielded a higher return than housing. Putting all your money into a house also breaks the basic rule of prudent investing: diversify.

This article discusses the filing of civil charges for improper trading against Invesco Funds Group, a subsidiary of Amvescap, an investment firm with headquarters in London, and Raymond Cunningham, its chief executive by state and federal prosecutors. On the same day Richard Strong gave up his many functions at Strong Financial, which he founded. Mr Strong is under investigation by Eliot Spitzer, New York's attorney-general, for allowing illegal trading of shares in his mutual funds. As the scandal spreads, America's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), mutual funds' main regulator, is trying to clean up the industry by devising new rules. At present, buy-and-sell orders do not count as late if they are received by intermediate traders of mutual-fund shares, such as brokerages, insurers and administrators of retirement plans, before 4pm. Market timing, the rapid trading of mutual-fund shares in order to exploit movements in the prices of the underlying securities, is not illegal but breaks the rules of most mutual-fund companies. Moreover, the agency is pushing for improved disclosure by obliging funds to reveal their policies on the valuation of their investments.

The article presents information about the Open Bank, a Stamford, Connecticut-based bank. It is stated that the bank offers video tellers who dispense cash through translucent pneumatic tubes. It is reported that there are separate booths for day-to-day money management, mortgages, insurance, investment, and financial planning.

The article discusses a variety of marketing issues associated with personal investing in the U.S. and Great Britain. In London, England, a marketing campaign was launched featuring Nicola Horlick, manger of an investment fund for Société Générale. Marketers in Great Britain and Europe have used the concept of hero-worship to promote personal finance. However, the author claims that such campaign would receive negative response from consumers in the U.S. Investors in the U.S. are placing their money on a market where top performers are seen, while British investors are investing in mutual funds.

Discusses developments taking place in the international business as of March 1997. Reasons for the closure of a factory of Renault SA in Belgium; Information on the death of businessman Yahaya Ahmad of Malaysia's national automobile manufacturer Perusahaan Otomobil Nasional Bhd.; Report that AT&T Corp. is planning $2.6 billion-worth of cuts in the next two years; Focus on Japan's current-account surplus that leapt to $1.28 billion in January, four times its size a year earlier.

Reports that in early 1997, a credit card linked to the owner's retirement savings account will be available from Banc One Corp. Contributions of Franco Modigliani, a Nobel prize-winning economist in the plan; Benefits of the card for people in saving more money through their personal retirement accounts. Drawbacks of the plan.

Reports that the collapse of the Barings PLC merchant bank in 1995 has exposed several weaknesses in the way the bank and other financial regulators keep watch over their charges. Features of the Barings group; Importance of spotting weak management and poor controls; Trading risks faced by Barings PLC.