Associated Press

Novak Djokovic of Serbia celebrates after defeating Rafael Nadal of Spain during the men’s singles final at the Australian Open tennis championship in Melbourne early Monday.

One of these days men’s tennis is going to get boring again. There will be a fallow period. Greats will retire, get hurt, fatten up, open bad restaurants, babble on TV and buy vineyards. There will be a new, unremarkable No. 1. A murky two through 10. Maybe a U.S. player—a real-live U.S. player!—will crack the top five. Grand Slam finals will shrink to three uneventful sets. Tennis will return to that stale-aired foyer it got trapped in a while ago—dull, characterless, skippable.

That time isn’t now. Men’s professional tennis may be the most satisfying sport on the planet at the moment. There is no game with so much excellence currently swirling at its top, that so reliably delivers not just entertainment, but historic greatness. It isn’t to be missed. Conventional superlatives fail. Once-a-lifetime? Symphony of brilliance? Wicked good? It all sounds cheesy, inadequate. But what’s happening in the men’s game is as close as sports gets to unadulterated joy, the kind of outrageous viewer experience that leaves the audience gasping, as if anaerobic, as it did Sunday morning, in the men’s final of the Australian Open.

WSJ’s Jason Gay watched the epic Australian Open men’s final tennis match between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal and tells Mean Street host Evan Newmark that tennis rules the Earth. Photo: Getty Images.

To be clear, when I say men’s tennis, I am really talking about the interactions of three players. Maybe four, if we want to be generous and include Andy Murray, who has yet to win a Grand Slam, and keeps grabbing for that glory, only to pull the doorknob off in his hand. The unquestioned top three are world No. 1 Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. Between them, they have won 31 Slams, and Djokovic is still shopping in aisle one. They are as formidable and as entangled a trio as tennis has ever witnessed—as silly as it is to get into generational comparisons, it’s fair to say that the great three of Borg, McEnroe and Connors (26 combined Slams) are on the run, in their flowing hair and short-shorts.

These days are like those good old days. This past week there were early mornings, depending on where you lived, and your ability to have woken up in darkness to watch the spectacle. Reasonable people reasonably used a DVR, but Sunday’s 5-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-7(5), 7-5 epic, won by Djokovic over Nadal, wasn’t designed to be breezed over via remote control. This was a match that accelerated and de-accelerated and accelerated again; that both men locked up and let escape; that left a pair of champions droop-shouldered and wobbly. It lasted a boiled egg under six hours, beating the second-longest Grand Slam final by 59 minutes. It was briefly delayed by rain. It ended with Djokovic yanking at his collar, stripping off his shirt, and unleashing a primal yell—Fred Stolle meets Freddie Mercury.

The win was Djokovic’s second straight Australian Open title and his third Slam victory in a row. Nadal won three straight in 2010, and Federer did it twice before, and Pete Sampras once before him. Looming above, there is only Rod Laver, who polished all four in the 1962 and 1969 calendar, and watched Sunday’s final in the arena that bears his name.

Once considered an interloper with dubious endurance, Djokovic, 24, now stands as the sport’s alpha. He began 2011 with a 41-match win streak, and has won four of the last five Slams. You’d think Djokovic’s dominance might suck some of the drama out of the sport, but this is thoroughly not the case. After a string of one-sided defeats to Djokovic, Nadal’s narrow loss Sunday is new fuel for the Spaniard, who remains just 25. “During all of 2011, I didn’t play much like this,” Nadal said afterward. At 30, Federer is elegantly fighting the sunset—he’s still capable of beating both, pushing Nadal to four sets in the semis, beating Djokovic in the French and taking him to match point in the past two U.S. Opens.

Tennis fans are giddy, and may get carried away in the afterglow of these tournaments, but this is defensible carrying away. That 2008 Wimbledon twilight five-setter between Federer and Nadal set a glorious standard, but since then there’s been a steady stream of classics, on all surfaces, between the big three, and even Murray, too. As soon as new matches are consecrated, they’re replaced. (How quickly Sunday’s thriller vaporized Djokovic’s five-set semi over Murray and Nadal’s four-setter over Federer, not to mention Victoria Azarenka’s 6-3, 6-0 rout of Maria Sharapova in the women’s final.) The torrent of great tennis has undermined the old fear that the game would unravel with new technology, that it would become a tedious game of baseline heavy hitting. Ha.

A confident Djokovic will press toward a Steffi Graf-style “Golden” Slam, with the delicious potential exclamation point of an Olympic title in London at the All-England Club. But his most formidable challenge may come next, at the French Open, on the red brick dust Nadal claims as a pied-à-terre.

Could a 60-minute Super Bowl equal this kind of drawn-out saga? An NBA Final? An Olympiad? (Please don’t say the Pro Bowl or the NHL All-Star Game.) Every spring someone trots out the claim that the flurry of buzzer beaters in the NCAA basketball tournament makes it the most riveting event in sports, and there’s always the World Cup, but what’s happening in tennis feels far more intimate, close up, personal. Djokovic, Nadal and Federer are deep in our pores. It feels like they have more to give, but you never can be sure, and that’s what makes it so….whatever word you want to use. On to Paris.

By DUNCAN MAVIN

While most global businesses are keen to talk up their plans for Asia, fewer of them have yet shifted operations to this part of the world.

Claire Huang, who runs marketing globally for all of Bank of America Corp.’s institutional business, relocated from Boston to Hong Kong earlier this year.

“You don’t have to be a brain surgeon to realize you better put some resources behind your business here,” says Ms. Huang. “One half of the world’s population, one third of the world’s GDP, five of the top 10 countries for high-net-worth individuals. The facts are overwhelming.”

On home turf, Bank of America faces stiff challenges amid economic uncertainty. The bank recently announced plans to cut 30,000 jobs, its shares have lost more than half their value over the past six months, and the company is facing multiple shareholder lawsuits related to the financial crisis.

But in Asia, Ms. Huang says there is a more optimistic economic outlook. “We don’t negate the fact those things [in the U.S. banking sector] are going on. But our clients are interested in growing their businesses, so we just have so much work to do.”

Ms. Huang recently spoke with Duncan Mavin. The following interview has been edited:

WSJ: Given the announcement of 30,000 layoffs at Bank of America, how is this affecting the business in Asia with regard to job numbers, expense constraints and morale?

Ms. Huang: Developing our international business is a key strategic priority for us. In the short term, we cannot be immune to the many current uncertainties affecting the global economy, and our team understands that. Our market shares are increasing in many areas and that is encouraging. What motivates us most is hearing how we can help our Asia clients to achieve their goals, both here locally and around the world.

WSJ: Is there a job to do in terms of communicating to staff and steadying the ship given the uncertainty in the U.S. banking sector?

Ms. Huang: I think you’ll find the mind-set of people here is that, “OK, I have an understanding of what’s going on there, now let me get on with my job.” It’s a very quick shift because we have our hands full, because there’s so much opportunity. Yes, we recognize that’s going on, but we have to keep growing our business, so let’s go do it.

WSJ: Tell me about the decision to relocate from Boston.

Ms. Huang: I think more of it will happen. In the industry, let alone our company, there will be more executives with global roles based in Asia.

I don’t have a crystal ball. But I think the idea of making sure the connectivity happens is the principle. I’ve only been here six months, so I’m kind of a test market. I would think other companies would think of similar moves.

WSJ: Did you bring a team with you or hire a new one?

Ms. Huang: It’s a blend. I still have a team in Charlotte, Boston, London and New York. And I’m building a team here. We had a team here already but we need more help. And yes, I do have a lot of late-night calls. The difficult part is when they get you both ways. An early morning and an evening conference call.

WSJ: Are there things that have surprised you since you moved here?

Ms. Huang: I find Americans very direct. They speak a lot in meetings. And I like that. You come to China, and people listen more than they speak. You almost have to draw things out of people. I like that too because listening is a good thing. The best of both worlds would be somewhere in between.

Also, I guess I had in the back of my mind that this is the United States of Asia. But it’s not. That’s such an American way of thinking. Every country has its nuances.

WSJ: One of your roles is to lead the bank’s corporate social responsibility efforts in the region. Do people here understand the value of CSR?

Ms. Huang: It’s a budding interest and depends on the country. But when people see it they say it makes sense. An example—in India, we’re going to restore a 16th Century book of fables called the Panchatantra. It’s a national treasure. Our partners and our clients see that it shows we’re interested in their local culture, and it shows commitment to the country.

When we give concrete examples, management gets it. We’ve had so much client interest in China to attend the Beijing Music Festival (which we also sponsor). People are starting to get it.

WSJ: Is CSR even more important for Bank of America in Asia than it is in the U.S.?

Ms. Huang: No one really understands how to make CSR blossom in Asia and make it an enabler to our business. I feel very strongly about that. I sit on the executive committee as well as the global board of our [philanthropic] foundation, to make sure this is in sync with the business. We need to show we’re here for the long term and we’re committed to our clients, and we’re doing the right things for our local culture.

WSJ: How do you measure the success of CSR projects?

Ms. Huang: We have surveys that measure client relationships, the health of our brand and employee engagement.

It’s a little bit of an art and a science.

Write to Duncan Mavin at duncan.mavin@wsj.com

By EVAN RAMSTAD

In 2005, Moon Kook-jin was in the U.S. running his small manufacturing firm when his father asked him to return to his native South Korea to solve problems at the small conglomerate his father had started but left others to run.

For Mr. Moon, his return involved more than familial duty. His father, the Rev. Moon Sun-myung, is the founder of the Unification Church and one of the most recognized Koreans in the world.

After decades in which he and his associates ran the businesses more as charities than as for-profit organizations, Rev. Moon realized they were becoming a major drag on both the finances and reputation of the church.

His son was in his mid-30s, a point, the younger Mr. Moon says, “when I was willing to do something to help my community out.”

As chairman of the Tong-il Foundation, which operates the Unification Church’s businesses, Mr. Moon has pared the number of businesses to 12 from just over 30 via a series of asset sales and mergers. All now produce an operating profit and contribute to the charitable work of the church, instead of drawing money from it.

It has been a wrenching process, Mr. Moon said in a recent interview with Evan Ramstad at his office in Seoul. Mixing business and religion is always difficult, but especially so when one’s father is a world-wide celebrity. Excerpts from the discussion:

WSJ: What is the basic structure of the Tong-il Foundation or, in English, Unification Foundation?

Mr. Moon: I’m the chairman of the Unification Foundation here in Korea. That’s a nonprofit. It’s actually a religious institution by its corporate form. It’s a supporting institution to the Unification Church. And our foundation owns a business group. We are different than other business groups in that other business groups operate to make profit for their shareholders. We operate to make profit in our business group for our church.

We have a church hierarchy. I’m not at the top of the hierarchy. My father is the leader of the church. My function is more like a chief operating officer. He actually decides where the major direction for our group investment is, which industries we’re going to be operating in, and then I’m executing the strategy and trying to make it work.

WSJ: What was the basic problem you encountered when you arrived in 2005?

Mr. Moon: We had a very challenging situation because we had over 30 businesses and we had quite a lot of losses in the group. And the accounting and management was less than adequate for the size of the companies we were running. We started investing in businesses [in the 1960s] because a lot of our members needed jobs. It was kind of like a jobs program initially. We were a new church and a new religion and we weren’t really very well accepted in society. Our members weren’t really given job opportunities. As a result, the management of the companies was not fully professional and they didn’t operate efficiently.

WSJ: What was the first thing you did?

Mr. Moon: Within the first week I interviewed everyone at the foundation headquarters and the conclusion I came to was, if I’m going to fix this problem, it’s not going to be with this staff. So this is where I first focused on changing personnel. I re-staffed the entire headquarters. I focused on bringing in a lot of professionals, CPAs, attorneys, seasoned managers and then we contracted with several consulting firms to help us start the process of reform. We spent a lot of time sorting out the group portfolio. We tried to scale down the size of the problem to make it more manageable. We got rid of the ones we didn’t want to spend time on and made time for the business we wanted to fix.

WSJ: Would you describe some of the moves you made?

Mr. Moon: We had this business called INP, a shipbuilding business that was acquired by our group after our group restructured in the 1997 IMF crisis period. When we looked at the business, at the capability of that business, and the prospects going forward, we thought it was not possible to operate profitably for the foreseeable future. We got rid of that shipbuilding business and then another smaller shipbuilding business. Then we had a number of small manufacturing businesses, about eight of them. I worked very hard to change them and we turned them into one company called TIC. And it has viability now. They’re in three major lines of businesses: automotive parts, grinding machines and ball screws. Now the business is viable. That process of integration was largely successful and that’s a businesses we could expand through M&A.

WSJ: Was it essentially your goal to get the businesses to make money for the church?

Mr. Moon: What was happening in the past was that the foundation received church donations from around the world and a lot of those monies were being used to subsidize the businesses we owned. That’s the reverse of the [current] model, though you can’t say it’s the complete reverse because the businesses were actually like welfare programs for church members. The difference now is, since all the businesses are profitable, the flow of money from church members to businesses has stopped. And now, the foundation receives money from the businesses and provides it to the church and its mission activities.

WSJ: What is your father’s role on the business side?

Mr. Moon: I basically present recommendations from a professional point of view. The nonprofit aspect is up to my father to decide. Based on his direction and perspective, we proceed. My father has never really been interested in the details of the business. He’s more interested in the overall direction. The actual detailed operations he doesn’t really get so involved.

WSJ: Was it harder to let people go than in a normal business setting because many of the people were connected to the church?

Mr. Moon: It’s been much more difficult to restructure this business than if it was just a normal business group that didn’t have the religious component. You had a lot of cross-pollination from people who work in the ministry working in the businesses. But they weren’t businesspeople by background. As a result, they really didn’t know what to do or how to do things properly and there were a lot of mistakes made.

Well, it worked, but it was a very painful process. Whenever you do restructuring, you always have your standard demonstrations and hate mail. I had those. But because it involved the church, it was also a lot more personal. That was the most difficult aspect of it. I had lots of back-seat drivers.

Write to Evan Ramstad at evan.ramstad@wsj.com

By VERONICA DAGHER

About five years ago, George Papadopoulos shifted his clients’ assets out of tax-managed mutual funds and into exchange-traded funds.

A certified financial planner in Novi, Mich., he says the move made good financial sense and pleased his clients. “ETFs’ inherent tax advantages and lower costs resonate more with clients,” he says.

Mr. Papadopoulos isn’t the only financial adviser to make the shift. Others question whether it still makes sense in the ETF era to pay for tax-managed funds, which are run with an eye to limiting investors’ tax bills. Tax-managed funds, like other types of actively managed funds, may or may not beat market benchmarks. Indexed ETFs, meanwhile, are often cheaper and more tax-efficient and have greater transparency.

“Competition from ETFs will slay all tax-managed funds,” predicts Daniel Wiener, a New York-based money manager and editor of the newsletter the Independent Adviser for Vanguard Investors.

Joel Dickson, a Vanguard Group principal and senior investment strategist, counters that Vanguard’s tax-managed mutual funds have been just as tax-efficient, if not more so, than its index funds and ETFs. Mr. Dickson says the tax-managed funds are passively managed, in that they follow an index. But they make some tax-related moves, like selling positions that have declined in value to realize a loss for tax purposes, or structuring the equity portfolio to tilt slightly away from higher-dividend securities in the benchmark.

Tax-managed funds typically aim to limit distributions of income and capital gains. Investors in the funds thus will owe little or no tax until they sell their fund shares. In addition to selling losing positions to offset gains and avoiding high-dividend stocks, a fund manager might hold stocks for more than a year (because long-term gains are taxed at lower rates than short-term gains).

When the bull market hit its peak around 1999, tax-managed mutual funds saw huge inflows as investors looked to save on taxes after racking up stock-market gains. The funds took in about $9.9 billion of new cash from investors that year, a figure that hasn’t been matched since, according to Strategic Insight Simfund.

But for most of the decade that followed, offsetting taxes wasn’t the biggest priority for some investors who already had plenty of losses embedded in their portfolios. Total assets in tax-managed funds decreased to $77.1 billion as of Oct. 30, down from $80.1 billion in 2010, Strategic Insight Simfund says. Investors withdrew a net $1.9 billion from tax-managed funds in 2010 and invested roughly $700 million this year as of Oct 30.

Active Route

For investors who want active and tax management, tax-managed mutual funds may make sense. But when fund managers don’t outperform the market or do worse than the market partly because they’re somewhat restricted by concerns about taxes, some in the industry question the value of these funds.

Jason Schneider

So far this year, some of the tax-managed funds in Morningstar Inc.’s large-blend category are trailing the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. However, over three-year and five-year periods, the funds have held their own against that S&P 500 benchmark.

“Tax management means trying to achieve something that’s not necessarily ingrained in a mutual fund and may not be the best use of active management,” says Veerendra Virkar, an analyst at Strategic Insight Simfund.

In a traditional mutual fund, investors buy and redeem shares from the fund, and the fund periodically distributes capital gains realized when securities are sold from the portfolio. Investors may end up paying taxes on gains the fund made even before they were shareholders (although those payments reduce the tax an investor will owe when he or she eventually sells the fund shares).

In contrast, ETFs have a special legal structure which typically gives shareholders fewer capital-gains distributions than traditional mutual funds. While ETFs don’t allow investors to avoid capital gains, they enable investors to delay them until they sell the ETF.

On the Lookout

The greater certainty and control that ETFs give investors in estimating their tax bill is a reason some advisers are choosing ETFs over tax-managed mutual funds and some other types of mutual funds. “We just won’t allow our clients to be surprised by a capital gain in a year where values have depreciated,” says Carl Amos Johnson, a Peterborough, N.H., certified financial planner.

In an era of increased volatility where 500-plus-point swings in the Dow Jones Industrial Average are becoming more common, investors like the ability to sell their ETFs during the trading day and immediately know their transaction price. Since most ETFs are index funds, investors also like having a clearer picture of what their ETFs own instead of the approximate allocation they often get when investing in a traditional mutual fund. The passive nature of many ETFs often means lower fees for investors as well.

To be sure, not all ETFs are tax-efficient. ETFs that invest in taxable bonds throw off lots of taxable interest income, just like bond mutual funds, for instance. And investors can be surprised by the taxes they owe on precious-metals and commodity-futures portfolios. The commission that brokerages charge to buy and sell ETFs can also eat into returns over time for investors who frequently trade.

Preserving Losses

Tax-managed mutual funds allow managers to capture losses during a down market and carry those losses forward into a bull market—something most ETFs don’t do.

Major players in the tax-managed mutual-fund sector say there will likely always be a place for these funds. The stock market could see another extended bull market. And federal, state and local budget crises will probably lead to higher taxes. That’s likely to fuel greater interest in tax-conscious investing, including tax-managed mutual funds, says Duncan Richardson, chief equity investment officer for Eaton Vance Corp.

No matter what vehicle investors choose, most in the industry agree taxes shouldn’t be the leading factor in any investment decision. However, it’s still an important consideration for many investors.

“Performance after Uncle Sam is done with you can make a big difference in your wealth accumulation over time,” says Tom Roseen, head of research services at Lipper.

Ms. Dagher is a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires in New York. Email her at veronica.dagher@dowjones.com.