Merrill Lynch has launched the Mercury Global Balanced Fund, the fifth in the growing fund family managed by U.K.-based Mercury Asset Management. The subscription period of the fund brought in $411.5 million, bringing total assets of Mercury's U.S. fund family, which was started in October 1998, to more than $2.2 billion.

The fund will invest in issuers located in the U.S. and in other countries that are part of the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Index and the Salomon World Government Bond Index.

"The Mercury Global Balanced Fund is designed to be a core investment that is explicit in approach, so clients should not be surprised about where their dollars are allocated," said Gary Lowe, head of Mercury's Global Equity Team and a member of Mercury's Central Strategy Group. "By investing in these well-developed marketplaces, we seek to avoid a lot of the risks that can be associated with less developed markets."

The Mercury Global Balanced Fund is the latest offered by Merrill and Mercury, the U.K.-based global asset manager Merrill acquired in 1997. The Mercury U.S. fund family also includes the Mercury Pan-European Growth Fund, the Mercury International Fund, the Mercury U.S. Large Cap Fund and the Mercury Gold & Mining Fund.

In general, the Fund will allocate 60% of its assets to stocks and 40% to bonds. Under normal market conditions, the portfolio will not waver more than 15% from this allocation. In addition, it will seek to hedge its non-dollar-denominated bond position back into U.S. dollars to minimize the effect of currency fluctuations.

Asset allocation and the equity portion of the fund will be managed by Mercury's Global Equity Team, while the fixed-income portion will be managed by the global team within Mercury's Fixed Income Division. Headed by Lowe, the Global Equity Team has 17 investment professionals responsible for nearly $7 billion in assets. The global team within the Mercury Fixed-Income Division manages more than $17 billion in assets, and the division itself has more than $46 billion under management.

Merrill's Asset Management Group is the second-largest active asset manager in the world, with more than $500 billion in assets under management. Its operating units include Merrill Lynch Asset Management, Merrill Lynch Mercury Asset Management and Hotchkis and Wiley. 

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