Hot Off the Presses

Deals

BISYS has entered into a definitive agreement under which Citi would acquire all of its outstanding shares in a transactionvalued at approximately $1.45 billion. Citi would combine BISYS Fund Services and Alternative Investment Services—which provide administration and distribution services for mutual funds, hedge funds, private equity funds, and other investment products—with its own operations. Simultaneously, JC Flowers, a private equity firm, would acquire BISYS’ Insurance Services Group and Retirement Services business from Citi.

Sterling Bancshares, Inc., has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MBM Advisors, Inc., a Houston-based investment advisory and pension administration/consulting firm with approximately $700 million in assets under management. MBM will operate as a subsidiary of Sterling Bank under the name of MBM Advisors, and the MBM senior management team, will remain and continue to serve in their present roles.

Nuveen Investments has announced an agreement to acquire HydePark Investment Strategies, a specialist in enhanced equity investment management. The acquisition also includes Richards & Tierney, Inc., a firm that provides specialized risk control and portfolio advisory services to institutional investors.

BenefitStreet, a California-based retirement and group benefits company, plans to buy Alliance Benefit Group-Mid-Atlantic LLC, a national benefits company with offices in Baltimore and Philadelphia. Benefit Street officials said the addition of the Alliance business will add $1.88 billion in assets and expand its operations into the East Coast market.

UBS Financial Services Inc.’s Encino, California, office announced that the Handler Consulting Group has joined its office after spending four years at RBC Dain Rauscher. Gary Handler, a Senior Vice President at UBS, has been named a member of the PRIME Asset Consulting Group, which provides specialized institutional consulting services.

Piper Jaffray Companies has announced the signing of a definitive agreement to acquire Fiduciary Asset Management, LLC (FAMCO), a St. Louis-based investment management firm, for approximately $66 million in cash at the time the transaction closes and future cash consideration based on financial performance. Piper Jaffray plans to enhance the business through additional product offerings and distribution capability and an expanded client base. FAMCO, established in 1994, has approximately $9.0 billion in assets under management.

California-based National Retirement Partners Inc (NRP), a network of independent retirement plan-focused advisers with more than 3,000 retirement plans and assets in excess of $24 billion, has signed RolloverSystems to help with its asset-retention and rollover strategy. NRP has launched the program with five of its member firms, according to a press release.

Adviser Tools

Charles Schwab has added 16 fund families to its Schwab Retirement Advisor Services platform, including BlackRock, JPMorgan Funds, and LeggMason. Schwab Retirement Advisor Services enables TPAs to serve commission-based retirement advisers through the same integrated trading and services platform as their fee-based adviser and plan sponsor clients .

Morningstar, Inc., is partnering with Pyxis Mobile, a provider of wireless software for the financial services industry, to deliver real-time Morningstar mutual fund and exchange-traded fund data to fund wholesalers. Under the Pyxis Mobile mPlatform Alliance (mPA) program, partner companies like Morningstar have the ability to deploy wireless applications to their customers based on Pyxis Mobile’s technology. With Morningstar Mobile for Wholesalers, fund wholesalers who use mWholesaler, can access and analyze Morningstar fund data directly from their Blackberry or Windows Mobile-powered devices .

Pershing Advisor Solutions LLC has launched a new program, Ideas Without Limits, through which Pershing meets with RIA firms one-on-one, then develops and implements customized solutions to help advisers maximize the growth and profitability of their practices. Issues on which Pershing might provide expertise include: planning for a merger, acquisition or transition, maximizing operational efficiency, and mitigating risk while staying abreast of the rapidly changing regulatory environment.

Investment Tools

MSCI Barra has developed a global family of Islamic indices designed to reflect the Shariah investment principles that guide Islamic investments. The MSCI Global Islamic Indices will incorporate dividend purification rules for more relevant benchmark for Shariah portfolios.The firm will introduce a set of flagship indices in July 2007, and the full global index family in October 2007 .

Standard & Poor’s has launched a fully investable GCC Shariah Index for Muslim investors in the Gulf and around the world. The S&P GCC Shariah Series includes S&P Saudi Shariah, S&P Bahrain Shariah, S&P Kuwait Shariah, S&P Oman Shariah, S&P Qatar Shariah, S&P United Arab Emirates Shariah—in addition to an S&P GCC Investable Shariah and an S&P GCC Composite Shariah Index.

IndexIQ, a Rye Brook, New York, index developer, has introduced the Active Value family of indexes and licensed the IndexIQ Active Value Small Cap Index to Claymore Advisors, a provider of ETF investment products, to create the Claymore/IndexIQ Small Cap Value ETF. IndexIQ’s Active Value methodology uses a proprietary analytical process in seeking to capture the essence of a value investing strategy in a passively managed, tax-efficient index product.

State Street Corporation will offer the Russell Global Indexes as an additional benchmark within its performance and analytics offering.

Securian Financial Services has unveiled Securian Signal, a managed-account product that uses ETF index investments along with strategic and tactical asset allocations. The portfolios will be managed by XTF Advisors.

Mutual Funds

Fidelity Investments announced the offering of three new enhanced index funds: Fidelity Large Cap Value Enhanced Index Fund, Fidelity Large Cap Core Enhanced Index, Fund, and Fidelity Large Cap Growth Enhanced Index Fund. The three funds normally will invest in stocks with large market capitalizations and will have the following benchmarks: the Russell 1000 Value Index, the S&P 500 Index, and the Russell 1000 Growth Index respectively.

Rydex Investments has introduced two funds designed to provide exposure to the high-yield bond market—Rydex High Yield Strategy Fund and Rydex Inverse High Yield Strategy Fund—funds that aim to fill a void for financial advisers seeking trading flexibility, along with the ability to take advantage of falling and rising credit default rates.

TIAA-CREF is adjusting the asset allocations in each of its seven target-date funds by increasing the amount of investors’ retirement assets exposed to equities. The firm is increasing equity allocations from 80% to 90% for the first target-date fund and extending the retirement date. TIAA-CREF will be increasing exposure to equities at the time of retirement from 35% to 50% and then will decrease exposure to 40% when participants are 10 years beyond the retirement date .

State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), the investment management arm of State Street Corporation, has announced a series of enhancements to its suite of target-maturity strategies Specifically, SSgA has added broader international exposure to the portfolios and included Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, credit bonds, and stable value investments. The asset-allocation glide path also has been adjusted to have a modest increase in the ending equity allocation in retirement. SSgA also has renamed its strategies from SSgA Age-Based to SSgA Target Retirement.

Prudential Retirement has introduced three new institutional subadvised funds that will be managed in a manner consistent with socially, ethically, and morally responsible investing. The three funds—covering the large-cap value, large-cap growth, and fixed-income asset classes—will be run by existing subadviser partners within Prudential Retirement’s Manager-of-Managers program .

ETFs

New York money manager Van Eck Global plans to launch a U.S. exchange-traded fund that will invest in Russian securities. The Market Vectors-Russia ETF will be the first Russia ETF listed in the U.S., according to Reuters. Van Eck also said the Securities and Exchange Commission had declared effective the prospectuses for the Russia ETF and the Market Vectors-Global Alternative Energy ETF.

State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), has announced two new SPDR exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Based upon S&P/Citigroup Global Equity Indices, the new SPDRs offer investors access to developed international markets, including the first capitalization-weighted vehicle covering international small-cap equities .

XTF, an asset manager specializing in strategic and tactical asset allocation portfolios composed of exchange-traded funds (ETFs), has entered the 401(k) market with nine new ETF-based mutual fund portfolios. The offering includes: three tactical asset allocation portfolios—conservative, moderate, and aggressive; four target date portfolios spanning dates from 2010 to 2040+; and a Country Rotation Portfolio and Sector Rotation Portfolio.

The Vanguard Group launched four bond ETFs featuring expense ratios of 0.11%. Managed by the Vanguard Fixed Income Group, the four ETFs—the Vanguard Total Bond Market ETF, Vanguard Short-Term Bond ETF, Vanguard Intermediate-Term Bond ETF, and Vanguard Long-Term Bond ETF—provide exposure to the broad U.S. bond market.