Benefits June 22, 2007

Canadian Pension Coverage Virtually Flat in 2006

June 22, 2007 (PLANSPONSOR.COM) - New data from Statistics Canada shows that the number of Canadian workers covered by a pension plan remained at 5.7 million as of January 1, 2006, virtually unchanged from 2005.
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A CBC news report said the annual survey found that the percentage of workers with pensions continues to edge down. Fewer than four in 10 (38.5%) workers were covered by a pension plan at the start of last year – down half a percent from the year prior.

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The data also showed that pension plans are much more common among public sector workers where 84% of the workforce are participants, according to the news report. In the private sector, 25.9% are covered by pension plans.

About 4.6 million of the 5.7 million who have pension plans at work have defined benefit plans, the data indicated. That number has risen by only 30,000 since 2000.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of the almost 900,000 who have defined contribution plans work in the private sector – up almost a percent from the year before.

Products June 21, 2007

MainStay Unveils Three 130/30 Fund Offerings

June 21, 2007 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - MainStay Investments has created three 130/30 mutual funds, according to a news release.
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The company said the three funds are based on the quantitative institutional strategies managed by New York Life Investment Management’s Equity Investors Group (EIG). The MainStay 130/30 Core Fund and the MainStay 130/30 Growth Fund will be available on June 29 while the MainStay 130/30 International Fund can be purchased starting August 31.

“We believe these three funds allow advisers to bring a deeper dimension to their client’s traditional equity style box. By helping to maximize the untapped potential of a client’s portfolio, 130/30 funds may be a useful adviser-driven vehicle that can help investors achieve their financial objectives,” said Mike Coffey, managing director and head of distribution at MainStay Investments, in the announcement.

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A 130/30 fund is an equity fund benchmarked to an index that invests 130% of its assets in long positions and 30% of its assets are sold short. The proceeds from the short sales are used to fund the purchase of the additional 30% of the long positions.

Through short selling and applying modest amounts of leverage, 130/30 strategies have the potential to generate higher information ratios than traditional active long-only strategies and may be able to achieve higher returns for the same amount of risk relative to the benchmark, according to the news release.

More information is at  http://www.nylim.com/mainstayfunds .

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