Mutual funds

Until now, the low-end separately managed account marketplace has seemed a bit like a Baskin-Robbins shop where you could get everything but vanilla. But if Kevin Carter has his way, the SMA industry could soon be getting a long-awaited 32nd flavor: index funds.

Morningstar has announced plans to create a global hedge fund and private partnership database.

Barclays Offers First ETFs In a 401(k) Savings Plan

It takes society 30 years to become comfortable with a new technology - be it steel plows, electric lights or video recorders. The device doesn't matter. By that standard, financial advisers are doing pretty well with separately managed accounts.

AllianceBernstein has rolled out six mutual funds that will be modeled after investment strategies that its private client team uses. Called the Wealth Strategies funds, the family of six funds offer growth, tax-managed growth and various balances between growth and fixed income, with two of the offerings investing in tax-exempt fixed income. AllianceBernstein decided to offer these strategies to retail investors who today, after three years of a bear market, are aware more than ever of the importance of sound portfolio construction, said Michael J. Laughlin, executive vice president of Alliance Capital and chairman of AllianceBernstein Investment Research and Management.

Struggling to maintain profitability in 529 plans and facing low general public awareness about the products, firms are increasingly adding features and catering to the needs of the high-net-worth client, hoping to snag the bigger fishes in the investment pond.

Eaton Vance has launched the Eaton Vance Tax-Managed Dividend Income Fund, an equity-income fund designed to take advantage of new favorable tax rates on dividend income.

The AIP Alpha Strategies I Fund has dared to go where no other open-end mutual fund has tread before: into the hedge fund realm. The fund is the first to offer a variety of hedge fund investment techniques packaged as an open-end mutual fund sporting continuous sales of shares, daily liquidity and transparency of all securities, both long and short.

CollegeChoice 529 Investment Plan, an affiliate of Bank One Corp., has expanded its college savings portfolio to include five new funds and a dollar-cost averaging feature. The plan now includes the Fidelity Advisor Inflation-Protected Bond Fund, the Franklin Mutual Advisors Mutual Shares Fund, the MFS Massachusetts Investors Growth Stock Fund, the Low-Price Stock Fund and the Templeton Foreign Fund. Its seven existing portfolios are invested in One Group mutual funds.

The Cleveland Foundation, the nation's second-largest charitable foundation with $1.5 billion under management, didn't waste any time joining the three-month-old Merrill Lynch Community Charitable Fund.

Trying to create a new niche in the 529 market and garner some of the assets of the hundreds of thousands of charitable organizations around the world, Seligman Advisors has come out with a 529 college savings scholarship account.

SEI Investments has rolled out Product Analysis, a mutual fund diagnostic tool that can help fund companies and their sales partners find new ways to market their funds by using statistical information and benchmarking tools from numerous data sources. This should prove particularly helpful to mutual fund wholesalers, who have had to build more of a relationship and offer in-depth consulting to their clients, according to SEI.

Brinker Capital has launched a series of principal-protected notes that are fixed income vehicles with market participation through an equity index. The first issue of notes will probably have a participation rate between 75% and 85%. As a fixed income vehicle, the fees associated with the product range between 75 and 90 basis points, as opposed to the 115 to 145 basis point range for equity products. The first offering, which has not yet opened, will close sometime in June, and subsequent notes will be offered periodically, probably every 30 to 60 days.

The Stanton Group and LOMA have teamed up to conduct a new survey that tracks compensation of portfolio managers according to fund performance and size. Results are expected to be published in September and are intended to help fund companies pay portfolio managers on a more consistent basis.

Pax World Balanced Fund last week introduced a contribution program whereby investors can contribute dividends and capital gains for humanitarian aid to Iraqi citizens affected by the ongoing war.

Merrill Lynch will start a donor-advised fund in April that will link the New York brokerage firm with a national network of community foundations to boost its charitable-giving assets.

PlusFunds Group of New York has created a hedge fund for the co-called "mass affluent" that addresses the issue of transparency for investors by being based on the Standard & Poor's Hedge Fund Index.

ICMA Retirement Corp. (ICMA-RC) of Washington, is one of the first to boldly jump into what it's dubbing the "Sidecar IRA," technically known as the "deemed IRA."

Craig Callahan thinks he has something that investors want: a little peace of mind.

In an effort to steer market-weary customers into their pockets, firms are offering principal protection on a number of funds, and some investors have warmed up to the old adage, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."