Products February 10, 2009

Select Sector SPDRs Lowers Expense Ratio

Select Sector SPDRs, a family of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), has lowered the average expense ratio for its nine sector ETFs from 0.23% to 0.21%.
Reported by

The new expense ratio went into effect on January 31, according to a press release. Launched in 1998, the Select Sector SPDRs had more than $19.8 billion in assets as of February 6.

Select Sector SPDRs are ETFs that divide the S&P 500 into nine sector index funds:

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  • Consumer Discretionary
  • Consumer Staples
  • Energy
  • Financials
  • Health Care
  • Industrials
  • Materials
  • Technology
  • Utilities.

“When we launched these funds more than 10 years ago, our expense ratio was 0.65%. Our Board and the Management of the Select Sector SPDR Trust made a commitment to move expenses lower as assets grew,” said Dan Dolan, director of Wealth Management Strategies, Select Sector SPDR Trust in announcing the change. “The lowering of our expense ratio by another 8.7% is made in the spirit of that commitment, and to maintaining our “investor first’ approach, making our sector ETFs accessible and affordable to as many investors as possible.”

More information is available at www.sectorspdrs.com.

 

Deals & People February 10, 2009

UBS Splits Wealth Management into Americas, Swiss Divisions

UBS has divided its wealth management units “to adjust to new market conditions and the changing environment,″ the company said.
Reported by

In a release today, UBS said it created two new business divisions, effective immediately: Wealth Management Americas, led by Marten Hoekstra, and Wealth Management & Swiss Bank, comprising all non-American wealth management businesses as well as the Swiss private and corporate client business. The latter will be led by Franco Morra and Juerg Zeltner.

The announcement comes as UBS unveiled its fourth-quarter losses of about $6.98 billion in a separate release. The bank also plans to further reduce headcount by another 2,000 in the investment banking unit. UBS said it has positioned itself to be profitable in 2009 by improving risk controls, reducing its balance sheet and positions in troubled securities, and raising capital from private investors.

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Wealth Management

Under the leadership of Hoekstra, the Americas unit “will continue to focus on gaining scale and market share in the domestic U.S. wealth management market as well as further developing the Canadian and Latin American markets,’ UBS said.

Last week, news outlets reported Wachovia Securities LLC and UBS Financial Services Inc. were in preliminary talks about a joint venture of their retail-brokerage units.

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