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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.

United Asset Management Corp. (UAM) is in talks to sell its Pilgrim Baxter & Associates, Ltd. subsidiary to Nationwide Financial Services, Inc. UAM, of Boston, would only confirm that talks were being held. A Pilgrim Baxter spokesman declined to comment.

John Hancock Funds is changing the names of two of its funds. The John Hancock Sovereign Bond Fund is changing its name to the John Hancock Bond Fund, and the John Hancock Global Rx Fund is changing its name to the John Hancock Global Health Sciences Fund. The changes were approved by the board of trustees of each fund. The investment objectives of both funds will remain unchanged.

Bank of Montreal is counting on Canada's weakened currency for the success of the three latest additions to its First Canadian family of funds. Launched on Oct. 2, the U.S.-dollar-denominated funds are designed for investors who are looking to hedge their currency bets through diversification. The funds include a money market, a bond and an equity index fund. The bond fund will invest in U.S.-government debt and the index will track the S&P 500 total return index.

The Chase Manhattan Corp. has acquired Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter & Co.'s global custody business with the purchase of Morgan Stanley Trust Co. and Morgan Stanley Bank Luxembourg, S.A. Terms of the deal were not disclosed but the businesses will be integrated into Chase's Global Investor Services unit. The combined entities will hold more than $5 trillion in assets under trust and custody and provide services to 3,000 institutional investors.

A Fidelity Investments shareholder last week filed suit against the fund management company and its affiliates, alleging that well-paid Fidelity fund directors have become a "rubber stamp" for what the shareholder contends are excessive fees charged investors.

On the brink of closing the five no-load, fixed-income funds it oversees, the board of directors of the Fundamental Funds named Cornerstone Equity Advisors, a two-year old investment advisory firm, to assume management of the funds.

The independent directors of the Yacktman funds have asked the SEC to intervene in their fight with Donald Yacktman. The directors contend that Yacktman and his money management firm have made "thinly veiled threats" to try to control the independent directors. In addition, the directors allege that employees at Yacktman's firm have engaged in improper practices, including unspecified violations of the funds' code of ethics.

Canada's new watchdog group -- charged with overseeing the firms that distribute mutual funds -- could not have been formed at a better time.

Fidelity customers will be able to check stock and mutual fund quotes by phone using Fidelity Investment's speech recognition system. By October, customers will be able to call Fidelity's automated line, say the name of the stock, mutual fund, index or option over the phone and receive an updated quote.

WASHINGTON -- The Securities and Exchange Commission wants the fund industry to provide investors with personalized statements, perhaps as frequently as every quarter, which detail the expenses each investor pays for investing in a fund.

Friedman Billings Ramsey Group, Inc., has completed its acquisition of Grandview Advisers, Inc., which managed the Grandview Realty Growth Fund.

American Skandia has added three new funds to the American Skandia Advisor Funds family. The new funds are: the ASAF Marsico Capital Growth Fund, which is managed by Tom Marsico.; the ASAF Neuberger&Berman Midcap Growth Fund, managed by Jennifer Silver, former manager of the Putnam Ultra Fund; and the ASAF Neuberger&Berman MidCap Value Fund, which is co-managed by Michael Kassen and Bob Gendelman.

Spectrem Group, a San Francisco-based research and consulting firm, is launching a new study of the market for retirement plans among the estimated nine million U.S. companies with less than 100 employees.

A mutual fund group that wants to go out of business used overstated net asset values (NAV) for its funds.

The Cardinal Funds have been merged into the Fountain Square Funds, which are advised by Fifth Third Bank. The Cardinal Funds were run by The Ohio Co., which Fifth Third recently acquired.

AIM Advisors, Inc., will be folding three former G.T. Global funds into the AIM Fund Family. In May, AIM's parent, AMVESCAP PLC, bought the Asset Management Division of Liechtenstein Global Trust, which operated in the U.S. as GT Global. The three funds will be merged into other funds with similar investment objectives.