Ford Motor Co., Dearborn, Mich., introduced a new lineup of 60 investment options for its nearly $8 billion defined contribution plan, said Less Mezza, the new director of Ford's National Employee Service Center.
As expected, Ford picked six core options from Fidelity and is carrying over four from its old lineup. Another 50 supplemental options will be offered, including 25 Fidelity funds and funds from Scudder, T. Rowe Price and Vanguard.
The $33 million Concord (Mass.) Contributory Retirement System is pulling out of tactical asset allocation and moving the money into international and small-cap domestic stocks with the same manager, Frank Russell Investment Management, said Grace Jones, administrator.
``(TAA) performance over the last two years has been very poor,'' Ms Jones said.
The system has about $5.5 million in TAA with Russell. Officials expect to move only a small portion of the money into international - the fund's first international move - but haven't decided how to divide the money. The change is expected to be made in January.
Foreign equities will be increased to 35% of assets from 25% at the C$480 million (U.S. $355 million) University of Toronto endowment. No decision has been made on how to allocate the additional assets. Neil Dobbs, secretary of the investment committee, said the fund could give more money to its two existing foreign stock managers or could allow one of its Canadian balanced managers to invest more abroad. The decision stocks was made following an asset allocation study. No other information was provided.
Futures trading on the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index reached record levels of open interest yesterday, said Ellen Resnick, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where GSCI contracts trade. Open interest as of the close Nov. 27 was 18,132 contracts, representing about $859 million worth of transactions outstanding, Ms. Resnick said. The previous record was set Nov. 21 with open interest of 16,097 contracts. Open interest is the number of contracts left outstanding at the end of a day's trading, and is an indicator of investment activity and liquidity.
