News Round Up

All the Colonial First State Investments (CFSI) managed funds taken over by Sovereign on September 7 have been renamed.

The CFSI unit trust range is now called Sovereign Unit Trusts and its Retirement Lifetstyle series has been renamed the Sovereign Retirement Lifestyle Series.

Sovereign is now offering its rebalancing facility with these funds. Under this feature a client's asset allocation is automatically realigned each quarter.

Rebalancing occurs when an investment is more than 5% off the desired benchmark.

The latest fund, Hedge Plus, is similar to the OM IP 220 funds that have been offered to New Zealanders.

Deutsche strrengthens its position
Deutsche Bank has struck a deal to buy all of US-based asset manager Zurich Scudder Investments from Zurich Financial Services for USD$2.5 bill. The deal does not include Scudder's UK operations, Threadneedle Investments.

The heads of agreement also include a broad strategic cooperation between Deutsche Bank and Zurich Group primarily in the fields of insurance distribution, asset management and banking.

The deal make Deutsche the fourth largest asset manager in the world with more than EUR1 trill in assets under management. It also provides a major expansion for Deutsche in the important US market and increases its product capabilities for actively managed investment products.

It also strengthens its position on the Asia/Pacific region through the operations in Australia, Singapore and Japan.

Latest deposit rates
UDC's new deposit rates are:
- UDC Secured term investment, 5.4% for one year. Min $25,000
- UDC Telephone call account, 4.8% for $100,000 plus, 4.65% for $20,000 to $100,00 and 4.2% for $5,000 to $20,000.
- UDC Secured Term Investment, 6.65% for 5 years, min $25,000.

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