Products September 11, 2007

Municipal Bond ETF Offering Announced by State Street

September 11, 2007 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), the investment management arm of State Street Corporation, has announced the launch of a Municipal Bond exchange-traded fund.
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The SPDR Lehman Municipal Bond ETF will begin trading on the American Stock Exchange on or about September 13, 2007, the announcement said. The fund seeks to correspond to the price and yield performance of the Lehman Brothers Municipal Managed Money Index.

The index provides exposure to over 22,000 issues in the most liquid segment of the municipal bond market.  The average credit quality of the municipal securities within the Index is AA1/AAA, and none of the bonds are currently subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

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Anthony Rochte, senior managing director of SSgA, said in the news release the annual expense ratio of the SPDR Lehman Municipal Bond ETF is 0.20%.

More information is at   http://www.ssga.com .

Products September 10, 2007

Fidelity, Sungard Introduce New Trading and Custody Platform Services

September 10, 2007 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Fidelity Investments and SunGard have announced the addition of new services to their integrated trading and custody platform for trust institutions and third party administrators (TPAs), including a directed trustee services program, a payment and reporting program for brokers who support retirement plans, and an online revenue management tool.
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The Directed Trustee Services program helps TPAs that custody assets with Fidelity to streamline management of qualified retirement plans by providing access to the professional trustee services offered by Fidelity Personal Trust Company, the announcement said. Through Directed Trustee Services, plan sponsors can access fiduciary services to help reduce risk, audit expenses, and administrative costs.

Paying Agent Services provide administrative support of contribution, distribution and loan processing, status reports on distributions, and IRS Form 1099-R tax reporting. Paying Agent Services can be bundled with Directed Trustee Services or are available on an unbundled basis, according to the announcement.

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The Fidelity Institutional Broker Network is a program for broker/dealers and their representatives who service retirement plans through a TPA relationship. For broker/dealer firms, the service can act as a compliance resource and also provides automated payments of asset-based fees to broker/dealers through the NSCC Commission Settlement Service. The service also provides reporting to fund companies of broker/dealer representative relationships to the retirement plans and a Web application designed exclusively for broker/dealers.

The online revenue management tool helps TPAs monitor commission payments from multiple fund companies across the multiple retirement plans they service. Data is refreshed daily and the system confirms payments by account, position, and payment instructions and supports information searches by a number of criteria, including plan name/account number, security, broker/dealer, and payment type.

Clients can print a consolidated report directly from the revenue management system or export the information to a spreadsheet.

The Fidelity/SunGard integrated trading and custody platform utilizes the capabilities of the SunGard Transaction Network (STN).

More information can be found at  www.sungard.com .

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