Portfolio

North American Funds of Boston, has named Global Alliance Value Investors as the sub-advisor for its North American Equity Income Fund.

NewRiver Investor Communications of Watertown, Mass., has developed Prospectus Express, patent-pending software that would allow mutual fund companies to post prospectuses and other lengthy fund documents in a format that would allow investors to immediately view and retrieve those documents. Other prospectus software allows users to print out documents but not view them online. Prospectus Express also enables users to search within documents for keywords. Currently, that is not possible through the SEC's Edgar database.

First Trust Corp. of Denver has created a program whereby employers can offer employees as many as 2,000 mutual funds from 200 fund families for their 401(k), 403(b) or 457 savings plans. First Trust is calling the new program OptionsPlus.

AIM Advisors of Houston has introduced Class B and Class C shares for its AIM Large Cap Growth Fund.

Stein Roe Mutual Funds of Chicago has launched the Stein Roe Growth Investor Fund, a no-load, multi-cap growth fund. The fund will mimic the Stein Roe Young Investor Fund, which delivered a 17.65 percent return in 1998. David Brady and Erik Gustafson, who have co-managed the Young Investor fund, will also assume responsibility for the Growth Investor Fund.

Branching into the retail retirement services business, American General Financial Group is creating a family of 23 mutual funds called the American General Fund Group.

Scudder Kemper Investments of Boston has introduced the Scudder Select 500 Fund and the Scudder Select 1000 Growth Fund, two funds meant to offer no-load investors an institutional money management approach. The first fund will be benchmarked against the S&P 500 and the second, the Russell 1000.

Groupama Asset Management of New York, an investment management firm, will launch its first mutual fund, a large-cap growth fund, to gain a broader U.S. customer base for the company. The fund, to be called the GAMNA Focus Fund, is in registration with the SEC. Groupama Asset Management is a division of the French insurance conglomerate Groupama.

Insurance companies are building their mutual fund sales, hoping to take advantage of the increasing interest in these investment vehicles and the pending explosion in retirement savings, industry experts say. Insurance firms are drawing on the strength of their established variable annuity distribution systems to compete with full-service investment houses.

IDEX Mutual Funds of St. Petersburg, Fla., has added five new funds to its family: IDEX T. Rowe Price Dividend Growth, IDEX T. Rowe Price Small-Cap, IDEX Pilgrim Baxter Mid-Cap Growth, IDEX Salomon All-Cap and IDEX Goldman Sachs Growth. The names include the sub-adviser on each fund. IDEX is also including the names of its sub-advisers on the 13 other existing funds in its family.