CI Financial Corp. had gross sales of $792 million and net sales of $217 million in February, the company said Monday.

That’s down 58% from net sales of $513 million in February 2008.

CI subsidiaries CI Investments Inc. and United Financial Corp. had combined retail net sales of $187 million in long-term funds and $36 million in money market funds last month. There were $6 million in net redemptions related to deposit notes, which use asset allocation strategies in which money is moved out of mutual funds when markets are declining. These transactions reflect a rebalancing of the deposit notes and not a redemption by clients from the product, CI said.

As of Feb. 28, 2009, CI had assets under management of $50.4 billion and total fee-earning assets of $74.5 billion, compared with assets under management of $65 billion and total fee-earning assets of $98.6 billion as of Feb. 29,
2008.

Assets under management consisted of investment funds at CI Investments and United Financial of $46.6 billion, institutional assets of $3.5 billion and structured product assets of $372 million.

CI also reported assets under administration of $23.1 billion, which consisted of $17.1 billion in assets under administration at Assante Wealth Management (Canada) Ltd. and $6 billion in assets under administration at Blackmont Capital Inc. Other fee-earning assets totalled $953 million.

IE