Briefly:

Previous Brieflies this week: | MON | TUE | WED | THURS |

(March 26, 2007) After six years as president and CEO of FundSERV, Alan Hutton has announced he will retire at the end of fiscal 2007.

“The past six years at FundSERV have been challenging and exciting,” says Hutton. “We have contributed significantly to the investment funds industry’s growth. Our success in reducing the time, cost and risk of our customers’ interactions has been very satisfying.”

Hutton will be succeeded by Brian Gore, currently director of Citigroup corporate and investment banking. Gore has been on FundSERV’s board since 1997 and served as chair from 2000 to 2003.

• • •

RBC Dominion Securities tops $150 billion

(March 26, 2007) RBC Dominion Securities announced Monday that its assets under management now exceed $150 billion, a record for the Canadian wealth management industry.

“We’re very proud of this achievement,” said David Agnew, national director, RBC Dominion Securities. “It’s the result of providing advisors with the best tools — from investment management to estate planning and insurance — to help them meet their clients’ goals. In return, our clients receive a distinctively superior wealth management experience.”

The firm also attributes some of this growth to the ability to provide discretionary portfolio management services. Discretionary assets account for 10% of its asset base, and, combined with the investment management business of RBC Private Counsel, RBC is the number-one provider of retail discretionary investment services in Canada.

• • •

GDP gap narrowed over last decade: StatsCan

(March 26, 2007) Canada’s per capita economic output lagged behind that of the United States from 1994 to 2005, but the gap has been narrowing since the turn of the millennium, according to StatsCan.

Canada’s 2005 gross domestic product per capita was 15.7% lower than the GDP per capita in the United States, an improvement from a lag of 19% in 1998.

The gap in GDP per capita between Canada and the United States is driven by two factors, says StatsCan: the difference in labour productivity, measured as GDP per hour worked, and the difference in the number of hours worked per capita.

StatsCan reports that prior to 2000, both components remained basically unchanged. However, since 2000, Canada has seen an increase in employment but less productivity from those jobs, so relative productivity has declined, while relative hours worked per capita has gone up dramatically.

In 2000, productivity in Canada was 94.1% of that of the U.S. By 2005, this proportion had declined to 89.0%. StatsCan says the decline in recent years is due to several economic shocks, including the SARS crisis, the outbreak of BSE, the power blackout in Ontario and the sharp appreciation of the Canadian dollar.

Declines in labour productivity have been offset by an increase in the number of hours worked per capita, which, by 2005, reached 94.7% of the U.S. level compared to 88% in the late ’90s.

StatsCan reports that these recent increases in the relative number of hours worked per capita have been driven by stronger job growth in Canada than in the United States. These strong gains have narrowed the gap between Canada and the United States in terms of the ratio of jobs to the working-age population.

• • •

Barclays Canada to offer three new ETFs

(March 26, 2007) Barclays Global Investors Canada has filed preliminary prospectuses for a handful of new iShares-branded exchange-traded funds with regulators across the country. The company expects the funds to be available to investors on or after May 18, 2007.

The new ETFs will include the CDN S&P/TSX SmallCap Index Fund, CDN Russell 2000 Index – Canadian Dollar Hedged Index Fund and CDN Jantzi Social Index Fund.

The SmallCap fund will trade under the ticker XCS and will track the new S&P Canadian SmallCap Index, while the fund tracking the Russell 2000 Index will trade as XSU. The third fund will trade as XEN and will track an index created by Jantzi Research, a leader in social responsibility research in Canadian and global securities.

• • •

(03/26/07)