By Greg Morcroft - Fidelity Investments, one of the world's largest financial services firms, has told its non-U.S. clients that they can't buy or sell mutual funds in their brokerage accounts after July.
A Fidelity spokesman said the policy change relates to “today’s continually evolving global regulatory environment,” but didn't elaborate, according to MarketWatch.
The ban will only apply to about 60,000 overseas accounts, or just under 0.3 percent of the 20 million total accounts at Boston-based Fidelity.
Existing overseas customers with automatic deposits to investment accounts that are being invested in mutual funds will have those funds invested in alternate assets like money market funds.