BOSTON (Reuters) – Federal civil fraud allegations against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. over a 2007 mortgage derivatives deal have drawn concern from some clients at the firm’s already-challenged money management unit.

The Oklahoma Teachers Retirement System voted on Thursday to put Goldman Sachs Asset Management “on alert” as it reviews the fraud allegations, an official at the fund told Reuters. Goldman manages more than $500 million of U.S. growth stocks for the retirement fund.

BOSTON (Reuters) – Hewlett-Packard Co <HPQ.N> Chief Executive Mark Hurd came to the company in 2005 with a reputation for cost-cutting and ruthless efficiency.

And as seen in Thursday’s bargain-bin deal to purchase ailing smartphone maker Palm Inc. <PALM.O> for $1.2 billion, Hurd’s penny pinching tendencies dominate even in the high-stakes realm of mergers and acquisitions.

AMSTERDAM/BOSTON (Reuters) – Did you hear that Goldman Sachs made the Iceland volcano erupt? It did pretty well shorting airlines.

It’s a joke, of course — Goldman isn’t quite that powerful — and there are plenty of others like it as comedians, traders and the man on the street take potshots at Wall Street’s biggest investment bank.

BOSTON, April 5 (Reuters) – Exchange-traded fund manager
ETF Securities, which oversees about $17 billion in assets
worldwide, is expected to extend its U.S. offerings beyond four
precious metals funds into a wide variety of other commodities
later this year, analysts and investors said.

The London-based firm has garnered almost $1.3 billion from
U.S. investors in its months-old metal-based funds so far.

BOSTON, March 19 (Reuters) – Morningstar Inc <MORN.O>
plans to buy credit rating firm Realpoint LLC to expand its
challenge to the three major rating agencies in structured
finance, one of the most lucrative parts of the business.

Chicago-based Morningstar said on Friday it will pay $52
million for Realpoint, a spinoff from GMAC Commercial Mortgage
Securities Inc [GMACC.UL]. Realpoint, based in Horsham,
Pennsylvania, focuses on structured credit products such as
commercial mortgage backed securities.

BOSTON, March 18 (Reuters) – Yale University Chief
Investment Officer David Swensen’s losses on big bets in
private equity, real estate and commodities have not deterred
the noted contrarian.

Yale disclosed on Thursday that it had increased significantly
its allocations to those sometimes risky and illiquid asset
classes at the end of its last fiscal year in June 2009.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Famed short-seller James Chanos said his decision to short health care companies last year proved to be the wrong move, as federal spending on health care seems about to rise rather than fall.

Chanos, who borrows and then sells stocks he expects can be repurchased later at a lower price, early last year told the markets on multiple occasions he expected a wide range of health care companies would suffer when federal funding was cut back.

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Scott Sperling, co-president of private equity powerhouse Thomas H. Lee Partners LP, has learned some hard lessons from the record boom and resulting swoon his industry just experienced.

“We need to be careful that we not push pricing beyond what makes sense,” Sperling said on Tuesday at the Reuters Private Equity and Hedge Funds Summit in New York. “Hopefully, we all learned that lesson and there will be a level of prudence going forward.”