Portfolio

Struggling to maintain profitability in 529 plans and facing low general public awareness about the products, firms are increasingly adding features and catering to the needs of the high-net-worth client, hoping to snag the bigger fishes in the investment pond.

Employers expanded the number of 401(k) plans in the nation by 4% in 2002, according to the National Defined Contribution Council (NDCC) and the Spectrem Group.

Eaton Vance has launched the Eaton Vance Tax-Managed Dividend Income Fund, an equity-income fund designed to take advantage of new favorable tax rates on dividend income.

The AIP Alpha Strategies I Fund has dared to go where no other open-end mutual fund has tread before: into the hedge fund realm. The fund is the first to offer a variety of hedge fund investment techniques packaged as an open-end mutual fund sporting continuous sales of shares, daily liquidity and transparency of all securities, both long and short.

Finances and health insurance are on the minds of Baby Boomers, as 36% of them say they think about their retirement savings nearly every day, according to a recent survey by Pulte Homes.

CollegeChoice 529 Investment Plan, an affiliate of Bank One Corp., has expanded its college savings portfolio to include five new funds and a dollar-cost averaging feature. The plan now includes the Fidelity Advisor Inflation-Protected Bond Fund, the Franklin Mutual Advisors Mutual Shares Fund, the MFS Massachusetts Investors Growth Stock Fund, the Low-Price Stock Fund and the Templeton Foreign Fund. Its seven existing portfolios are invested in One Group mutual funds.

The Cleveland Foundation, the nation's second-largest charitable foundation with $1.5 billion under management, didn't waste any time joining the three-month-old Merrill Lynch Community Charitable Fund.

Trying to create a new niche in the 529 market and garner some of the assets of the hundreds of thousands of charitable organizations around the world, Seligman Advisors has come out with a 529 college savings scholarship account.

SEI Investments has rolled out Product Analysis, a mutual fund diagnostic tool that can help fund companies and their sales partners find new ways to market their funds by using statistical information and benchmarking tools from numerous data sources. This should prove particularly helpful to mutual fund wholesalers, who have had to build more of a relationship and offer in-depth consulting to their clients, according to SEI.

Brinker Capital has launched a series of principal-protected notes that are fixed income vehicles with market participation through an equity index. The first issue of notes will probably have a participation rate between 75% and 85%. As a fixed income vehicle, the fees associated with the product range between 75 and 90 basis points, as opposed to the 115 to 145 basis point range for equity products. The first offering, which has not yet opened, will close sometime in June, and subsequent notes will be offered periodically, probably every 30 to 60 days.