Salomon Offers New Members-Only Tech Fund

Make way for yet another tech fund. This one has an intriguing twist, but it's only for

Salomon Smith Barney

customers.

More than a third of the roughly 80 tech funds out there have rolled out in the past 12 months --

Munder Funds

alone has

filed or launched four tech funds and one biotech fund. But the

Consulting Group Global Sciences and Technology Investments

fund, according to preliminary paperwork filed with regulators Tuesday, gives the little guy a taste of the services typically reserved for institutions and fat-cat individuals.

The

Consulting Group

, which like Salomon is a unit of

Citigroup

(C) - Get Report

, will choose and monitor a manager for the fund. The Wilmington, Del.-based group has been doing the same for institutions and high-income individuals since 1973. The group began offering mutual funds in 1993.

With the new tech fund, slated for an October launch, two subadvisers, not named in the fund's initial filing, will focus on technology, telecommunications and biotech stocks with above-average earnings momentum and solid management. The fund will take an all-cap approach and can invest up to 30% of its assets overseas.

Most of the Consulting Group's 13 funds have managed to stay ahead of their peers over the past three years, according to

Morningstar

. Consulting Group Large-Cap Growth, the firm's only growth-oriented stock fund, has a 26.5% five-year annualized return over the past five years, beating the

S&P 500

by more than two percentage points and outpacing two-thirds of its large-cap growth peers. That fund is run by

Barclays Global Investors

and

Provident Investment Counsel

.

The fund has a hefty $10,000 investment minimum, and to buy shares investors must have either a Salomon Smith Barney account or an adviser who participates in one of the firm's wrap programs. Wrap programs are essentially a brokerage firm's fee-based,

no-load fund supermarket.

That's too bad, because the fund also sports a 1.25% expense ratio, much lower than the average tech fund's 1.66%.

See Tuesday's

Fund Moves, Manager Changes.

See Monday's

Fund Moves, Manager Changes.