(July 17 -16:15 ET) – The Investment Funds Institute of Canada is reporting that for June net sales (including reinvested distributions) of mutual funds were up slightly from last year at $2.1 billion.
Most of that total, about $1.5 billion worth, was accounted for by reinvested distributions, but the numbers are up a bit from 1999. Total assets in mutual funds reached a new high of $420.8 billion, up 3.1% from May, and up 18.6% from a year ago.
Just over half the new money went into stock funds, most of it into foreign equity funds, with $956 million of $1.2 billion flowing into foreign funds. Mutual funds now hold about $126 billion in foreign equities, compared to just under $100 billion in Canadian stocks. There’s also about $33.5 billion in U.S. stocks.
For the month, mutual funds managed positive net flows into each of foreign, U.S. and Canadian equity funds, balanced funds and foreign bond funds.
The footnotes to the IFIC numbers reveal a few shreds of industry news. First Canadian Funds Inc. has been renamed BMO Investments Inc. Indeed a visit to the former First Canadian Web site reveals that BMO’s funds have all been renamed with the BMO prefix.
Earlier this year BMO began stamping its brand on everything from its full-service broker, Nesbitt Burns Inc., to its discounter, InvestorLine. Now the bank’s fund family has been officially ‘BMO-ized’, too.
The report also reveals the Richmond Hill, Ont,-based Canso funds will be wound up this month. Offered by Canso Fund Management Ltd., the firm had just over $300,000 in assets at last count.
Also, in June neither Titan Investment Management Corp. nor McLean Budden Ltd. submitted its monthly numbers to IFIC. This was the second month in a row for McLean Budden. Instead, IFIC used the last-reported month of data from the two companies.
-IE Staff