Financial Advisor

Lynnfield, Mass.-based RIA firm F.L.Putnam Investment Management Company said this week that it had acquired Seascape Capital Management, an independent registered investment advisor firm with $500 million in assets under management based in Portsmouth, N.H. It’s the second acquisition this year for the New England acquirer, which recently said it had surpassed more than $10 billion in assets under management. Seascape was founded by CEO Monica McCarthy in 2005, according to the SEC filings.

Andina Capital Management, a Logan, Utah, RIA managing about $1.3 billion in assets for high-net-worth clients, has accused several former top managers of stealing company secrets and misappropriating funds to seed their breakaway advisory practice.

The world became richer in 2025, as personal wealth, measured in U.S. dollars, rose by 10.8%, the fastest annual increase since 2017, according to a report by UBS. The increase, fueled by strong markets and rising non-financial assets, outpaced the growth seen in 2024 (4.6%) and 2023 (4.2%). Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) saw the strongest growth at 17.5%. The Americas followed with 8.5% and Asia-Pacific (APAC) with 5.9%, the report said.

Frustrated real estate lawyers are pleading with New York City officials for more details on how a new tax on luxury second homes is going to work ahead of the Aug. 30 deadline when owners will find out how much they have to pay. Several dozen real estate brokers and tax attorneys weighed in at a remote Department of Finance hearing Thursday, commenting on a bare-bones regulatory framework the city issued last month after the state enacted the new tax as part of its annual budget in late May.

The 2020 U.S. Census experienced a sharp rise in the number and share of Americans who identified as being of two or more races, a development chalked up partly to demographic change and partly to changes in how the questionnaire was worded and answers tabulated. There were 33.8 million such people in 2020—10.2% of the population—up from 9 million and 2.9% in 2010.

Rabid interest in the World Cup has helped to drive more than $3 billion of wagers on a prediction market backed by Robinhood Markets Inc. and Susquehanna International Group, which launched just a few months ago.

As investors increasingly turn to artificial intelligence for help with everything from stock picking to risk management, JPMorgan Chase & Co. has been testing whether a model can do something more ambitious: allocate money itself. The early results are encouraging. Researchers at the bank built an array of AI-powered investing agents that shift between stocks and bonds depending on changing market conditions.

The largest builders of artificial intelligence data centers have doubled their debt load in the last five years, turning to borrowing to finance an unprecedented spending spree they claim is needed to transform the economy. Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp., the five biggest spenders on new data centers in the US, collectively added some $350 billion to their debt obligations in the last five years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Higher-income US parents plan to reduce their back-to-school spending, while less-wealthy families are trading down to cheaper products — the latest evidence of heightened consumer caution in a period of rising prices. Parents with annual earnings of more than $100,000 expect to spend less on school-related shopping this year, according to a Deloitte survey of families in late May.

The fast-rising costs of owning a home have some young Americans questioning whether buying a house is still a good investment. Take Tony Zhang, 34, who bought a $950,000 townhouse in Irvine, California, in 2021 and says he now regrets it. The supply-chain manager says investing his down payment of roughly 30% in the stock market instead would have left him with a portfolio worth as much as $1 million today.