National Financial Adds Partner
National Financial, owned by Fidelity and one of the largest providers of clearing services for broker-dealers, is establishing a relationship with Stifel Nicolaus to make the company's sell side equity research available to its 300 broker-dealers clients. The service will be available through Streetscape, National Financial's online brokerage workstation.
Stifel Nicolaus is one of the country's largest equity research firms and was recently ranked first in The Wall Street Journal's 2010 Best on the Street survey based on excellence in stock picking and earnings accuracy.
The new relationship with Stifel offers National Financial broker-dealer clients access to one of the largest domestic equity research firms on Wall Street with 76 analysts covering more than 1,100 U.S. companies. Research will be available across multiple sectors including consumer, financials, technology, health care and energy.
The Streetscape workstation enables a single point of access and lets clients avoid having to sign contracts with individual providers, manage multiple invoices and coordinate support and training with individual vendors, says National Financial.
MassMutual Encourages Young Savers
MassMutual's Retirement Services Division is joining forces with author Farnoosh Torabi, an independent Generation Y money coach, to encourage younger retirement savings plan participants to take a more active role in planning and saving for retirement.
The alliance, according to MassMutual, is meant to benefit participants of all ages, but is particularly aimed at Gen Y, generally considered those born in the 1980s and 1990s. The goal is to help them understand the value of saving early for retirement.
The awareness program will be conducted through online seminars, online video, social media interactions and live speaking events. MassMutual created the program to address the fact that recent surveys show up to 53% of retirement plan participants under 30 do not save enough to receive the full employer match.
OCE Releases Comps Companion
OCE Interactive is releasing OCE's Comps Companion research platform, the company's latest offering in relative valuation benchmarking of U.S. equities. Comps Companion follows OCE's earlier release of its Market Topographer platform for researching, benchmarking and comparing U.S. Equities.
Comps Companion will aim to explain why each company trades at a particular relative premium or discount compared to its peer group due to such things as financial leverage, dividend payout ratio or growth expectations.
Roumell Introduces Mutual Fund
Roumell Asset Management LLC, Chevy Chase, Md., is introducing Roumell Opportunistic Value Fund, the firm's first mutual fund. Its objective is capital appreciation and income, which it will seek by investing in equity, debt and cash.