TIAA-CREF Ranks 9th Overall Out of 67 Mutual Fund Families in Barron’s Annual Ranking

TIAA-CREF ranks 9th out of 67 fund families in the 2007 Lipper/Barron’s Fund Family Survey. Published in the February 4, 2008 issue of Barron’s, the survey is based on asset-weighted returns of 67 fund families for the 12-month period ending December 31, 2007. TIAA-CREF’s mutual fund family ranked higher than 85% of the fund families in Barron’s 2007 survey.

“TIAA-CREF’s mutual funds are a key part of our effort to provide a range of lifestage and wealth accumulation products to our clients to help them get to and through retirement,” said Scott Evans, Executive Vice President and Head of Asset Management, TIAA-CREF. “Our strong showing in the Lipper/Barron’s Fund Family Survey, and appearing among the top of investment lists like it, speaks to the importance of our investment philosophy that seeks to deliver consistent growth for our investors, and the breadth of experience and expertise of our investment professionals.”

The study only includes mutual fund performance and therefore does not reflect performance of TIAA-CREF’s annuity products or real-estate portfolio.

The Lipper/Barron’s Fund Family survey uses an asset-weighted ranking system. Each family’s funds were weighted by asset size, and the family’s overall ranking was determined by weighting five fund categories in proportion to their overall importance within Lipper’s fund universe. Overall rankings were calculated by Lipper by measuring each fund’s return against those of all funds in its Lipper category, leading to a percentile ranking which is then weighted by asset size, relative to the fund family’s other assets in its general classification and multiplying each fund’s score by the weighting of its general classification. The category weightings for the one-year results: general equity, 51.4%; world equity, 16.2%; mixed equity, 14.5%; taxable bond, 14.6%; tax-exempt bond, 3.2%.

The survey ranked 67 mutual fund families that had the following attributes: At least one money fund, three U.S. stock funds, a world-equity fund and a balanced fund. In addition, it must have at least two taxable bond funds and a tax-exempt bond fund. No money funds or single-state bond funds are included in the analysis. The rankings do not take sales charges into account.