S&P: 60% Of Canadian Active Fund Managers Underperform The S&P/TSX Composite During 1st Quarter - Index Provider Releases Latest SPIVA Scorecard for Canada

Standard & Poor's, the world's leading index provider, announced today that the latest results of its Standard & Poor's Index Versus Active Fund Scorecard for Canada ("SPIVA") show that only 40% of active mutual funds in the Canadian Equity category were able to outperform the S&P/TSX Composite Index during the first quarter of 2010. Similar results were seen in the Canadian Small/Mid Cap Equity category of mutual funds when compared against the performance of the S&P/TSX Completion Index.

SPIVA Canada reports on the performance of actively managed Canadian mutual funds versus their relative Standard & Poor's benchmark. A key advantage of the SPIVA report is its correction for survivorship bias, which can skew results as funds merge or liquidate.

In the first quarter of 2010, actively managed funds in the Canadian Equity category underperformed the S&P/TSX Composite Index when examining both equal- and asset-weighted returns. However, active funds fared better across some of the other fund categories. On both an equal- and asset-weighted basis, active funds outperformed their benchmarks in the categories of U.S. Equity and Canadian Focused Equity. For the Canadian Focused Equity category 58% of active funds outpaced the blended index (comprised of 50% S&P/TSX Composite + 25% S&P 500 + 25% S&P EPAC BMI LargeMidCap).

Over longer periods of time, Standard & Poor's continues to observe indices outperforming the majority of domestic funds. In the three- and five-year periods ending Q1 2010, only 10.9% and 3.3% of actively managed Canadian Equity funds have outperformed the S&P/TSX Composite Index.

Looking at the performance of actively managed foreign equity funds, over the last five years, only 9.8% of active funds in the International Equity category, 11.3% in the Global Equity category and 9.7% in the U.S. Equity category have outpaced the S&P EPAC BMI LargeMidCap, S&P Developed BMI LargeMidCap and S&P 500 indices respectively.

All SPIVA reports can be accessed in their entirety by going to: www.spiva.standardandpoors.com.