Standard & Poor's Launches US Mutual Fund Excellence Awards Program

NEW YORK, Sept. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- Standard & Poor's Equity Research is launching a new US Mutual Fund Excellence Awards program designed to recognize those funds that have most consistently achieved the highest overall ranking of five-star based on S&P's proprietary, quantitative holdings-based research, it was announced today.  Recipients will be named in nine style categories, with a separate equity category for "New and Notable Funds" – those in existence for three years or less.

"By moving beyond traditional performance-based research to include factors such as quality of holdings, manager tenure, risk, relative cost and more, we believe we are able to provide new insight into mutual fund dynamics," said Stephen Biggar, Managing Director, Global Equity Research at Standard & Poor's.  "Our awards are designed to recognize those funds that have most consistently achieved the highest ranking based on our methodology and analytics."

S&P Equity Research introduced its holistic mutual fund research methodology in September 2009.  The approach incorporates bottom-up research about a fund's underlying stock, bond and mutual fund holdings as well as performance, risk, and cost factors to relatively rank more than 19,000 mutual funds on a scale of one (lowest) to five (highest). The quantitative methodology goes well beyond the fund industry's traditional approach to rankings, which tends to be based on a historic-looking assessment of risk adjusted past returns, with S&P's approach bringing a broad range of proprietary tools into the analytical methodology, including S&P STARS research, S&P Credit Ratings, S&P Fair Value and S&P Quality Rankings along with fund level inputs such as manager tenure and expense ratio.

The result is greater clarity and a more robust picture of a fund's risk/reward characteristics on a weekly basis. A further advantage of this approach is that it gives S&P the ability to analyze and rank new funds, without the need for a minimum three-year performance history.

"In building our awards program, we felt it was important that new funds not be shut out from the awards process," said Todd Rosenbluth, mutual fund analyst at S&P and the lead architect of S&P's mutual fund research methodology.  "Our 'New and Notable' category is meant to provide recognition to those equity funds that might not have the lengthy track record of others in their respective peer group, but hold stocks viewed favorably by S&P Equity Research and have favorable cost factors according to our methodology."

S&P Equity Research makes its mutual fund research product available through its Market Scope® Advisor (MSA) platform, a leading source for multi-asset class research, rankings, and allocation strategies.  MSA is now available to more than 80,000 financial advisors.

Categories and Timeline

In early October, S&P Equity Research will announce the three finalists in each of the equity and blended categories, and two finalists in the fixed income category, as follows:

1. International Equity

2. Global Equity

3. Domestic Equity Large Cap

4. Domestic Equity Mid Cap

5. Domestic Equity Small Cap

6. Domestic Equity Multi Cap

7. Blended Individual Securities

8. Blended Fund of Funds

9. Taxable Fixed Income

10. New & Notable

The Gold, Silver and Bronze recipients in each category will be announced during a live video broadcast from the offices of Standard & Poor's in early November.

About the Standard & Poor's Equity Research Mutual Fund Awards

The S&P Equity Research Mutual Awards is an annual awards program designed to recognize those US mutual funds that have achieved the highest overall ranking on the most consistent basis during the previous measurement year based on S&P's proprietary, quantitative research methodology.  Among the factors the research process seeks to identify are consistently strong performance; high quality holdings as measured by S&P STARS equity research, S&P Credit Ratings and S&P Quality Ranks; and favorable cost factors.

Additional information about the awards program, the selection methodology, and the award recipients is available at www.spfundawards.com

About Standard & Poor's Equity Research Services

As the world's largest producer of independent equity research, Standard & Poor's licenses its research to global institutions for their investors and advisors.  Standard & Poor's team of experienced U.S., European and Asian equity analysts use a fundamental, bottom-up approach to assess a global universe of multi-asset class securities across industries worldwide.  Follow Standard & Poor's equity analysts' U.S. market commentary each day at http://www.equityresearch.standardandpoors.com/

The mutual fund rankings and/or equity research and recommendations provided by Standard & Poor's Equity Research Services are performed separately from any other analytic activity of Standard & Poor's. Standard & Poor's Equity Research Services has no access to non-public information received by other units of Standard & Poor's.  Standard & Poor's does not trade for its own account.  The analytical and ethical conduct of Standard & Poor's equity analysts is governed by the firm's Research Objectivity Policy, a copy of which may also be found at http://www.standardandpoors.com/ or by clicking here http://www2.standardandpoors.com/spf/pdf/equity/ResearchObjectivityPolicy2005.pdf.

About Standard & Poor's

Standard & Poor's Financial Services, LLC, a subsidiary of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.(NYSE: MHP), is the world's foremost provider of independent credit ratings, indices, risk evaluation, investment research and data. With offices in 23 countries and markets, Standard & Poor's is an essential part of the world's financial infrastructure and has played a leading role for  150 years in providing investors with the independent benchmarks they need to feel more confident about their investment and financial decisions. For more information, visit www.standardandpoors.com

Standard & Poor's and its affiliates provide a wide range of services to, or relating to, many organizations, including issuers of securities, investment advisers, broker-dealers, investment banks, other financial institutions and financial intermediaries, and accordingly may receive fees or other economic benefits from those organizations, including organizations whose securities or services they may recommend, rate, include in model portfolios, evaluate or otherwise address.

Standard & Poor's or an affiliate may license certain intellectual property or provide pricing or other services to, or other wise have a financial interest in, certain issuers of securities, including exchange-traded funds and mutual funds whose investment objective is to substantially replicate the returns of a proprietary Standard & Poor's index, such as the S&P500. In cases where Standard & Poor's or an affiliate is paid fees that are tied to the amount of assets that are invested in the fund or the volume of trading activity in the fund, investment in the fund will generally result in Standard & Poor's or an affiliate earning compensation in addition to the subscription fees or other compensation for services rendered by Standard & Poor's.

These materials have been prepared solely for informational purposes based upon information from sources believed to be reliable. Standard & Poor's makes no representation with respect to the accuracy or completeness of these materials, the content of which may change without notice. Assumptions, opinions and estimates constitute our judgment as of the date of this material and are subject to change without notice.

A reference to a particular investment or security by Standard & Poor's and one of its affiliates is not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold such investment or security, nor is it considered to be investment advice.

No endorsement of any mutual fund included in a mutual fund report should be implied by the fact that the mutual fund bears the S&P mark or is based on an S&P Index. S&P does not receive fees from ETFs and/ or mutual funds for their inclusion in mutual fund reports. Standard & Poor's Indices does not sponsor, endorse, sell, promote or recommend any index-based product. S&P does not receive fee from funds included in mutual fund reports. No other unit of S&P, including Rating Services, contributes to the content of a mutual fund report.

SOURCE Standard & Poor's

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