Portfolio

Forum Funds of Portland, Maine has filed a preliminary prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the Shaker Fund, which would invest primarily in small and medium-sized companies and would be the newest fund in Forum's family of 19 funds. The family includes equity and municipal bond funds.

Defined contribution retirement programs have seen rapid expansion over the past decade. But, defined contribution business will be undergoing a slowdown, as alternative investment options increase, market returns decline, and retiring baby-boomers begin to remove assets, according to a study released last week by Strategic Insight, a mutual fund research and consulting company in New York, and NewRiver, an online financial service provider in Andover, Mass.

At least one U.S. exchange has begun negotiations with the Financial Times Stock Exchange of London for the licensing rights to list exchange-traded funds that will track a new series of socially-responsible indices offered by FTSE, said Will Oulton, president of FTSE North America in New York.

American Century of Kansas City, Mo. has become the latest in a series of no-load fund companies to add C-shares, or level loads, to some of its funds.

Turner Investment Partners of Berwyn, Pa. will add three value funds and one bond fund to the firm's growth and fixed-income mutual funds, according to the company.

In a departure from its growth orientation, Janus Capital of Denver plans to offer its first value fund on May 1, according to a preliminary prospectus filed Feb. 14 with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Online portfolio products, derided by the Investment Company Institute of Washington D.C. as unregulated mutual funds, got a strong endorsement last week when it was revealed that Fidelity Investments of Boston and Charles Schwab of San Francisco would begin offering the products to investors.

Driven by investors' desire for asset-based fees and advice from investment professionals, assets in mutual fund wrap programs increased 21.3 percent in 2000 over 1999, according to Cerulli Associates of Boston.

Over the past year there has been a lot of talk about exchange-traded funds. Industry conferences have been held on the subject, the media has written widely about them and analysts have researched them. But, are they really worth all of the attention? Do they really pose a threat to mutual funds? After all, total exchange-traded fund assets are equivalent to less than one percent of total U.S. mutual fund assets.

NEW YORK - Offering account aggregation can be a good method of marketing a mutual fund family, however there are pitfalls that can undermine the benefits of the arrangement. That was the message conveyed by industry executives at a conference here earlier this month on mutual fund systems and technology sponsored by Marcus Evans of Chicago.