State Street buys Wachovia's trust and custody biz
From The Boston Globe
As reported yesterday in the MFWire.com, State Street Corp. said it would buy the custody and institutional trust business of Wachovia Corp. The deal enables State Street to pick up an additional $61 billion in custody assets and about 270 clients. Wachovia said it's selling the businesses to focus on its core businesses in asset management and consulting services. Wachovia's trust business is mainly in the middle market -- accounts of $500 million or less. State Street already has some middle market custody business but it is smaller and not concentrated in the Southeast.

All that cash
From The Wall Street Journal
An influx of new cash, usually viewed as a success in the mutual fund world, can also cause trouble for small funds that specialize in shares of small and midsized companies. In some situations the investment success that draws new money comes from hot initial stock offerings that can't be replicated on a larger scale. Small and midcap portfolios of more than $100 million in assets have grown by at least 50% this year, Chicago fund-tracker Morningstar Inc. said.

Inflow hogs
From Investor's Business Daily
Through July this year, the 10 best-selling families have hogged 98% of net inflows, according to Financial Research Corp. The best-selling firms include five of the industry's 10 largest: Vanguard, Janus, Fidelity, American and Putnam. Three more are among the 20 largest. In July, Vanguard, Fidelity and Janus accounted for $8.9 billion of the industry's $8.8 billion in net sales, according to FRC. And the trend is escalating -- for the top 10, their 98% share was way up from a nearly 56% share of net inflows in 1998. In 1997 the top 10 barely garnered half of net inflows.  

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