Portfolio

Morningstar is introducing investment information and analysis aimed at the retail Japanese mutual fund industry. The new products are being introduced by Morningstar Japan K.K., a collaboration between Morningstar and Softbank Corp., an information and software company based in Tokyo. On October 26, Morningstar Chief Executive Officer Don Phillips will be in Tokyo along with Yoshitaka Kitao, president and chief executive officer of Morningstar Japan, who is also CEO of Softbank, to talk about the new products. Using Morningstar's U.S. operations as a model, Morningstar Japan plans to publish investment research and analysis for Japanese investors and financial professionals. Softbank also has a major stake in the U.S. Internet businesses, Yahoo! Inc. and GeoCities.

Confluence Technologies has released the latest version of its flagship mutual fund software, FundStation Version 4.30. The new version will be able to translate performance data into euros, when that currency is adopted. It also allows companies to easily transfer their data to CTCI 2.0, NASDAQ's new message format for daily and year-end reporting of mutual fund information.

Major fund companies are not likely to embrace Cuba as the antidote to the outflow of assets from their equity funds, but one Miami-based company hopes to be the first into a market it believes is destined to take off.

The Presbyterian Church is creating a family of mutual funds in which its affiliated colleges, schools and congregations can invest the money they raise.

New England Financial (NEF) is creating a new computer-based personal money management tool to be known as the Electronic Money Management Account. All money placed in the account will be invested in a money market fund offered through New England Securities Corp., an affiliate.

Employees are logging onto the Internet and their internal company intranets increasingly to check on their defined contribution plans.

The Hartford Mutual Funds is introducing C shares into its family of 10 mutual funds. The new C shares will pay brokers a two percent sales commission and a one percent annual trail beginning in the second year to be paid quarterly. Clients pay a one percent up-front sales load on new investments and an annual one percent 12b-1 fee on total assets. A one percent contingent deferred sales charge is assessed on redemptions within 12 months of new share purchases.

Select Advisors, Inc. has added a new product to its asset management services called Market Value Portfolio. MVP, a wrap account or group of funds sold as a package to advisers, brings together a portfolio of commission-free, passively-managed funds like index and market funds. "Since MVP performance is not dependent on an adviser's or manager's ability to time the markets or pick stocks, it's the perfect service for a particularly volatile stock market," said Jack Waymire, president and chief executive officer of SAI.

The Enterprise Group of Funds has opened its first sector fund, the Enterprise Global Financial Services Fund. The subadviser will be Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. The fund is Enterprise's 14th and will invest in financial services in the U.S. and abroad, including developed markets represented in the Morgan Stanley Capital International Europe, Australia, Far East Index. No emerging markets investments will be made. The minimum initial investment is $1,000.

Even as an increasing number of Asian and emerging market funds announce plans to liquidate, merge or change their mandates because of poor returns, INVESCO is starting a new international fund, the International Blue Chip fund.