February 2009

“Northern Trust stands out in the otherwise grim financial sector,” according to Barron's, which ranked Northern Trust #2 out of 59 fund families in the 2008 Lipper/Barron's Fund Family Survey published on February 2, 2009.

In the related article, “Northern Trust on a Roll,” Barron's goes on to say: “If there were more financial institutions like it, neither the banking business nor the mutual-fund business would have fared so badly last year.”

View the Barron's “Northern Trust on a Roll” reprint now

According to Steve Potter, president of Northern Trust Global Investments, the firm's goal is to be conservative and consistent. And Northern Funds' and Northern Institutional Funds'strong long-term performance reflects Northern Trust's conservative, risk-managed investment style.

View Northern Funds and Northern Institutional Funds 5- and 4-star mutual funds

Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Due to ongoing market volatility, the Funds may have experienced negative returns for the time period. For complete performance information, please go to our Funds & Performance page.

Barron's Methodology: Rankings are based on asset-weighted returns in five categories: domestic equity; world equity (including international and global portfolios); mixed equity (stocks and bonds); taxable bonds and tax-exempt funds. Domestic equity has the largest weighting, at nearly 49%. The fund-family rankings also take into account an individual fund's performance within its Lipper peer group. Given that returns are asset-weighted, if a fund firm's largest U.S. equity portfolio underperforms its peers, it will hurt its overall rankings, and vice versa.