Deals & People February 1, 2008

Newport Group Appoints New Northeastern Regional Director

The Newport Group, a national full-service provider of qualified and non-qualified retirement plans, has appointed Alan Valenca to the position of Regional Director, Qualified Plans, for the firm’s Northeastern region
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As a Regional Director, Valenca will develop business relationships and identify market opportunities to promote the sale of the firm’s qualified retirement plan administration and investment services to third-party intermediaries. He will be based in Massachusetts, according to the firm. He will report to Newport’s Chief Marketing Officer Tom Pittman.

Valenca has more than 20 years of experience in the retirement and financial services industries, most recently in a similar position within the retirement services national accounts division of Automatic Data Processing (ADP).

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He has also held the positions of vice president of retirement plan services with Morgan Stanley, and senior vice president with the Boston-based retirement services firm of Walker MacRae Inc.

The Markets February 1, 2008

ETF Assets Increase to $608B

The combined assets of the nation's exchange-traded funds (ETFs) rose in December by $36.3 billion, or 6.3%, to $608.4 billion, according to the Investment Company Institute (ICI).
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On a year-to-date basis, ETF assets increased $185.8 billion, or 44%, an ICI news release said.

Assets in domestic equity ETFs increased $103.1 billion between December 2006 and December 2007 and global equity ETFs assets rose $68.5 billion during this period.

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Assets of bond index funds were $34.6 billion and hybrid index funds were $119 million in December.

During December, the value of all ETF shares issued exceeded that of shares redeemed by $44.52 billion.

The detailed December data can be found at http://www.ici.org/stats/etf/etfs_12_07.html while general information about the ICI ETF data is available here.

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