Upgrades

Schwab Institutional has launched PortfolioServices, which SI's VP of technology, Dan Skiles, calls an outsourced version of Schwab Performance Technologies' PortfolioCenter PMS application. The Web-based PortfolioServices is particularly attractive to advisors leaving wirehouses," Skiles says. Made possible through its acquisition of the technology outsource provider Etelligent, about 100 firms with $38 billion in AUM are already running the application. Skiles said there are 3,300 clients currently using PortfolioCenter, but he is not worried about cannibalization.

...MainStay Investments, the retail distribution arm of New York Life Investment Management, introduced the MainStay Institutional Capital (ICAP) Global Fund to advisors at the annual Morningstar conference in late June. Joseph Rodriguez, director of investment management for NYLIM MainStay ICAP, noted that over the past few years, "over $20 billion a year in net new flows" have come into mutual funds with global strategies, with investors and intermediaries looking to take advantage of the 60% of worldwide capitalization that is outside the United States, along with the risk-adjusted diversification benefits. The new fund will follow the ICAP "relative value" approach to large-cap stocks, and will typically hold between 50-80 securities, of which at least 40% will be ex-U.S.

...Schwab's Laudus Funds, which partners with third-party money managers, has added international equity and global equity mutual funds from London-based Mondrian Investment Partners Ltd. to its lineup. Laudus Mondrian International Equity Fund (LIEQX) will invest primarily in large-cap equities of developed international companies; Laudus Mondrian Global Equity Fund (LGEQX) will invest in both U.S. and non-U.S. securities, and may also invest in emerging markets companies.