At Deadline

Retirement Projected to Hit $22 Trillion by 2016

The U.S. retirement market is projected to grow to nearly $22 trillion by 2016. That represents a 38% increase from an estimated $16 trillion mark for the end of 2011, due mostly to continuing market recovery, according to data released by Cerulli Associates, a Boston-based research firm.

IRAs are grabbing a growing share of total retirement assets, according to the statistics. Cerulli notes that rollovers from defined contribution plans have fueled the growth of IRAs, which today represent 29.7% of the retirement market. By 2016, IRA assets will account for 33%, according to Cerulli projections.

Incentives to entice Baby Boomers to stay in defined contribution plans have been few and far between, which has led investors to roll large balances into IRAs, Alessandra Hobler, an analyst in Cerulli's retirement practice said in a statement. Without action to prevent these distributions, rollovers will continue to fuel IRA assets, furthering their significant market share, beyond 2016, Cerulli said.

Fund Uses Student Research; Gets Morningstar Five Stars

Hancock Holding Company announced that the Hancock Horizon Burkenroad Small Cap Fund, that uses investment research produced by university students, has received a five-star overall rating from Morningstar.

The fund, celebrating its tenth anniversary, also ranked in the top 1% among small cap core funds for the 10 year period ending Dec. 31, 2011, according to Lipper Analytical.

Launched in 2001 with less than $1 million in assets, the Burkenroad Small Cap Fund has grown to more than $90 million. The fund focuses on stocks with market caps of less than $2 billion for companies located or doing business in the Gulf South, which encompasses Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

The fund is named after and partially based on research from Tulane University's Burkenroad Reports program, which produces student-written investment reports on regional publicly held companies.

Peter Ricchiuti, director of research for the Burkenroad Program and assistant dean at Tulane University's A.B Freeman School of Business said he hasn't been surprised by the fund's success.

"It may not be flashy or sexy," Ricchiuti said. "But I really think in the long run it's the way to make money."

Deutsche Boerse: It's a Black Day for Europe

NYSE Euronext said it would focus on its "standalone strategy,'' while Deutsche Boerse declared this a 'black day' after the European Commission prohibited the merger of the two exchange operators to continue.

"This is a black day for Europe and for its future competitiveness on global financial markets. The EU Commission's decision is based on an unrealistically narrow definition of the market that does no justice to the global nature of competition in the market for derivatives,'' the Executive Board of Deutsche BoerseAG said. "The over-the-counter derivatives market, the major part of the market as a whole, is completely precluded. We therefore regard the decision as wrong.''

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