Assets of money market mutual funds up 1.9%.

Assets of money market mutual funds rose to $609.27 billion, a gain of 1.9%, in the week that ended Oct. 5, the Investment Company Institute reported.

That's $11.27 billion above the preceding week's $598 billion.

Total money market assets have not broken the $600 billion mark since May 18, but came close the week ending Aug. 17 when the total rose to $599.58 billion.

The gains were across the board but were led by strong flows into institutional. money funds.

These funds rose by $7 billion in the week, to $176.75 billion. Both taxable and tax-exempt funds' posted gains.

Retail-fund assets climbed as well, rising by $4.27 billion, to $432.52 billion.

Taxable funds increased by $2.86 billion, to $339.16 billion, and tax-exempt funds gained $1.59 billion, to $93.36 billion.

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PNC Bank Corp. has rolled out its first mutual fund shares with back-end sales charges.

The new "Class B" shares have been made available for six of the 23 portfolios in the retail PNC Family of Funds.

This complex has $4.8 billion of assets. The six long-term portfolios that allow investors to pay the sales charge when they cash out have a total of $900 million of assets.

Similar to back-end load products offered by other companies, investors in the new-PNC fund shares pay penalties for withdrawing their money in less than six years. Sales charges for such withdrawals step down from 5% to 1% of principal during this period. -Barton Crockett

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