Two financial planning organizations separately announced today that they’ve launched online tools that will allow consumers, regulators and others to search for advisers with their professional designations. The College for Financial Planning announced its new website, CFP’s Professional Designation Information Portal , which it said is aimed at educating people about the college’s designations by providing information about the necessary requirements to obtain and keep its titles, according to a news release. The site is also meant to bolster transparency and help consumers better understand the letters they see on business cards and websites, according to a release.

Many real estate funds sold to institutional investors are charging too much, according to consultant Towers Watson & Co. It’s possible that widespread use of unfair fee structures could keep some of these big buyers from taking advantage of distressed sales of commercial property, the firm said. “I think the fees may well have an impact” on transactions, said Douglas Crawshaw, a Towers Watson senior investment consultant.

A group of lenders has taken majority control of Aveos Fleet Performance Inc., formerly named Air Canada Technical Services. Aveos, which repairs Air Canada’s fleet of aircraft, had been facing a cash crunch.

C anadian banking executives can rest assured they won’t face pay caps or new taxes on their institutions, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty reiterated Wednesday. Mr. Flaherty’s comments come a little more than a week before he hosts Group of Seven finance ministers and central bankers in Iqaluit for a meeting that will include discussions about proposals in the United States, Britain and other G7 countries to crack down on banks and recoup some of the government aid they received at the height of the global financial crisis.

C aterpillar Inc., CAT-N the world’s largest maker of construction and mining equipment, offered an unexpectedly guarded view of the coming year Wednesday, sending its stock down more than 8 per cent and pulling the broad market down along with it. The cautious outlook from the bellwether company came as Caterpillar posted stronger-than-expected quarterly earnings and said it was seeing encouraging signs that economies around the world were rebounding from a recession that hammered its sales over the past year. But the company, a component of the Dow Jones industrial average, also forecast 2010 earnings below the average Wall Street estimate

B oeing Co. BA-N surprised investors with a bigger-than-expected fourth-quarter profit on Wednesday, and said testing of its two newest planes is on track.

T he U.S. Federal Reserve Board has decided to hold interest rates at a record low and pledged to keep them there for an “extended period” to nurture the economic recovery and lower unemployment. One member — Thomas Hoenig, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City — dissented from the Fed’s decision to retain the pledge to hold rates at record lows.