U.S. securities firms received the lowest commissions from equitiestrading since 2006 amid a fifth straight year of outflows fromstock funds and the worst returns during the bull market that beganin 2009. The industry split $10.9 billion in fees last year from assetmanagers, down 6 percent from 2010, according to data compiled by Greenwich Associates . Survey respondents told the Stamford-based research firm thatthey expect the fees they pay U.S. brokers to buy or sell equitysecurities to increase to $11.4 billion in 2012. The increaseprojected a year ago failed to materialize, Greenwich Associatessaid. Wall Street firms have cut compensation and eliminated jobs asbusiness slows. During the fourth quarter, the six largest U.S.banks saw a third straight drop in combined trading andinvestment-banking revenue. Lower commissions put pressure on assetmanagers to consolidate more of their trading with larger brokers,according to Jay Bennett , a managing director in the equities group at GreenwichAssociates. "Brokers must balance revenue with cost," he said in a phoneinterview. "They say to asset managers, `How can you, Mr. Client,help me on that score?' That means the asset manager needs toconcentrate more business with the firm, and that makes it harderto spread it down to the second or third tier of brokers." Brokers are also seeking to complete more trading electronicallysince automated transactions are cheaper to execute than thosehandled manually, Bennett said. Electronic trades carry lowercommission rates, he said. The Greenwich Associates report was based on responses from 316trading desks, in some cases more than one at the same company.Commissions for the 561 institutions Greenwich Associates analyzeswere then extrapolated from the responses. Some participants gaveresults for calendar year 2011, while others gave fee data for12-month periods ending in the first quarter of 2012, GreenwichAssociates said. Trading volume for U.S. stocks averaged 7.8 billion shares a day in2011, down from 8.52 billion in 2010, according to data compiled byBloomberg. "When you have a smaller pool, you're trying to get more withless," said George Bodine , the former director of trading at General Motors Asset Management and now a vice president of data analytics and research at Markit Group Ltd., a financial data provider based in London. "It hampers yourability to have access to brokers and hurts smaller and mid-sizefirms more," Bodine said in a phone interview. "It's a realscramble." Many fund managers compensate brokerages for research and advisoryservices by steering business to them. Asset managers got researchfrom an average of 38 firms and used 43 brokers to trade last year,according to Greenwich Associates. Asset managers paid $6.2 billion for research and advisory serviceslast year, or 57 percent of total commissions, Greenwich Associatessaid. Mutual funds and traditional investment firms used 56 percentof their commissions for research, including access to analysts andcorporate executives, while hedge funds spent 59 percent for thoseservices, down from 68 percent a year earlier, the report said. Investors pulled money from mutual funds that buy U.S. stocks for afifth straight year in 2011, the longest streak in data going backto 1984, according to the Investment Company Institute in Washington. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as China Mp3 Player with Microsd Card Slot , 10.2 android 4.0 tablet Manufacturer for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Manual Mp4 Multimedia Player.
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