United Financial Corp. announced that AllianceBernstein L.P. has been appointed portfolio advisor to the US Equity Value Pool and to a portion of the Institutional Managed US Equity Pool, effective today.

AllianceBernstein is one of the largest publicly traded asset management firms in the world, with approximately US$717 billion in assets under management at Dec. 31, 2006. It provides diversified global investment management services that include both growth and value equities, blend strategies and fixed-income services to institutional, high net worth and retail clients worldwide.

The United Financial pools will be served by an AllianceBernstein team specializing in investing in large-capitalization U.S. equities using a value approach.

“We are pleased to have AllianceBernstein assume the role of portfolio manager of our US Equity Value mandates,” said Joe Canavan, chairman and CEO of United Financial. “AllianceBernstein has posted strong performance as a value manager with a solid team of analysts and portfolio managers who have demonstrated first-rate risk control disciplines.”

Christopher Nikolich, senior vp of AllianceBernstein, is lead portfolio manager. He has been with AllianceBernstein for 13 years and has 15 years of industry experience. He holds an MBA in finance and international business from New York University and a BA in finance from Rider University in New York. Nikolich leads a team of six members with an average tenure with AllianceBernstein of 12 years. The team also benefits from research conducted by the firm’s other equity and quantitative analysis groups.

AllianceBernstein’s strong value orientation is demonstrated in its high-quality fundamental stock research combined with quantitative tools that lead to superior stock selection. Its approach draws the majority of portfolio holdings from the Russell 1000 Value Index, although the team does not limit portfolio holdings to this universe of stocks and will select attractive investment opportunities from other parts of the equity market.

Under the direction of AllianceBernstein, the US Equity Value Pool and the value portion of the Institutional Managed US Equity Pool will maintain their focus on large caps but are expected to have less emphasis on “mega-cap” companies.

United Financial selected AllianceBernstein to replace Deutsche Investment Management Americas Inc. following the decision by former lead portfolio manager Tom Sassi to retire from Deutsche.

United Financial has an established and successful relationship with AllianceBernstein, which is portfolio advisor to the International Equity Diversified Pool and co-portfolio advisor to the International Equity Value Pool.

United Financial is a Canadian investment management and wealth planning firm with approximately $10.1 billion in assets under management as of February 28, 2007. It is controlled by CI Financial Income Fund.