In order to avoid another “flash crash” like the one which took place on 6 May 2010, the SEC has approved an extension of the emergency cutoff system (circuit-breakers) to all equities and ETFs listed for trading in the United States, the Wall Street Journal reports. The US stock markets are planning to put the extension into effect by 8 August, but are continuing to negotiate with the regulator over the adoption of a substitute system which would perform better.Meanwhile, trading in equities and ETF worth USD1 or more will be suspended if there is a variation of 30% or more in any five-minute period. For shares which cost less than USD1 each, the suspension will be put in place if there is a rise or fall of more than 50% in five minutes.Currently, the suspension takes place after five minutes if there is a variation of over 10%, but this system applies only to shares of the S&P 500 and the Russell 1000, as well as the 344 most heavily-traded ETFs.

Les Echos reports that the French government has announced that laws which will transpose the European UCITS IV directive into French law “have been transmitted to the Council of State». They will be passed and published before the holidays. France will be one of the leaders in transposing the regulations. The plans are ambitious, and all actors have preferred to take the necessary time to ensure a successful transposition. Participants at the beginning of the year had estimated that the bill would be passed by the end of first quarter.

Among the three bills to be transmitted to the Cortes General, Spain’s legislature, a law which transposes the European OPCVM IV directive into Spanish law was adopted by the council of ministers on 24 June. A statement from La Moncloa (the seat of the Spanish government) states that the new regulations increase the supervisory powers of the CNMV and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

The board of trustees at Invesco PowerShares Capital Management on 21 June approved the liquidated of the actively-managed ETFs PowerShares Active Alpha Multi-Cap and Active AlphaQ, whose acronyms on NYSE-Arca are PQZ and PQY, respectively, on 30 September. The funds were launched in April 2008, and have respective assets of USD3.6m and USD10.1m.Ben Fulton, managing director of global ETFs, states that Invesco PowerShares considered it “in the best interests” of investors to refocus its resources on areas which are sustaining the most interest from clients.

HSBC is planning to launch ETFs covering Russia, India, European emerging markets and the CIVETS countries (Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa), Money Marketing reports. The emerging markets range from the asset management firm will be complete by the end of the year, says Farley Thomas, global head of ETFs and wealth management solutions.

Money Marketing reports that F&C Management is considering an overhaul of its product ranges, which would involve jettisoning the Thames River brand.F&C, when asked about the reports, stated that it would like to recruit a new head of marketing, but that no decision has been taken at this time concerning the future of the Thames River brand.

Lee Robinson, manager of the hedge fund firm Trafalgar, is raising money for a planned hedge fund in Monaco, where he resides. He has already received approval form the FSA in the UK for the new firm, Altana. The fund will use a global macro strategy, according to reports in the Financial Times. The launch is reported to have angered Goldman Sachs, which via its Petershill fund owns a minority stake in Trafalgar, which it bought at a high price in 2008.

Stoxx Limited has announced the launch of the iStoxx Europe Minimum Variance Index. The new strategy index uses Harry M. Markowitz’ Modern Portfolio Theory to create a hypothetical, long-only risk-optimized portfolio that selects and weights constituents of the Stoxx Europe 600 Index in such a way that the portfolio’s expected variance is minimized.The iStoxx Europe Minimum Variance Index has been initiated by and licensed to Ossiam, an asset manager dedicated to ETFs partly owned by Natixis Global Asset Management, to underlie an exchange-traded fund. «The methodology of the iStoxx Europe Minimum Variance Index, initiated by Ossiam’s quantitative Research and Investment team, combines the best attributes of passive and quantitative management,» said Fabien Dornier, chief investment officer of Ossiam. " «The launch of the iStoxx Europe Minimum Variance Index provides investors with an efficient portfolio management tool.»

The Hong Kong management firm Kong Quam Asset Management has recruited Simon Potter as director, to serve in the newly-created position of head of portfolio development for alternative products, Asian Investor reports. Potter previously worked at Triple A Partners in Hong Kong. Assets under management at Quam AM as of the end of March totalled about USD80m.

Legg Mason vient de recruter Eric Simonnet en tant que responsable de la distribution Benelux. Basé à Paris, il s’occupera des activités de vente et de distribution de fonds auprès des distributeurs tiers, notamment des intermédiaires financiers, gestionnaires d’actifs, gérants de fonds de fonds, banques et plateformes de distribution haut de gamme, en Belgique, aux Pays-Bas et à Luxembourg. Dans ces trois pays, Legg Mason distribue ses fonds depuis 2004.Eric Simonnet vient d’Oddo Asset Management où il était dernièrement responsable de la distribution Benelux (depuis juin 2008), après y avoir été commercial auprès des conseillers en gestion de patrimoine indépendants. «L’arrivée d’Eric reflète nos fortes ambitions et nous continuerons à renforcer nos équipes en Europe Continentale», commente Vincent Passa, directeur de la distribution France, Monaco et Benelux.

Legg Mason has recruited Eric Simonnet as head of distribution for Benelux. He will be based in Paris, and will handle fund sales and distribution activities via third-party distributors, including financial intermediaries, asset managers, fund of fund managers, banks, and high-end distribution platforms, in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. In these three countries, Legg Mason has been offering funds since 2004. Simonnet joins the firm from Oddo Asset Management, where he was most recently head of distribution for Benelux (since June 2008), after serving as a salesperson addressing independent financial advisers (IFAs). “Eric’s arrival reflects our strong ambitions, and we will continue to add to our teams in continental Europe,” says Vincent Passa, director of distribution for France, Monaco and Benelux.

According to information received by Newsmanagers, Philippe Sabbah, who left Threadneedle in early June, will be joining Robeco Gestions in Paris. He is expected to be appointed as CEO in charge of sales development. At Threadneedle, Sabbah was head of the Paris office, from 2007, and previously served as head of institutional clients at JPMorgan Asset Management in Paris. Robeco Gestions lost its CEO, Arnaud Perrier, in February 2010. Perrier joined Jean-Louis Laurens, the firm’s former chairman, at Rothschild & Cie Gestion, to serve as head of sales and marketing. He was followed one year later by Lionel Deny, who was an institutional salesperson at Robeco Gestions.

The regulatory authorities have granted approval for the birth of a new banking group: Quilvest Wealth Management, announced on 9 December 2010 (see Newsmanagers of 05/05/2010), built out of the meger of the wealth management activities of the Compagnie de Banque Privée and the Quilvest group. On paper, the new group has EUR10bn in assets under management and custody, and a total of 270 employees.The new group is made up of three entities in three different countries: Quilvest Switzerland Ltd, in Zurich, Quilvest Banque Privée in Paris, and Compagnie de Banque Privée S.A. in Luxembourg. Although an operation of this nature will naturally lead to some changes in the organisation, the time has not yet come to overhaul all areas of expertise within the group. Concretely, Paris, which manages EUR3.2bn, including EUR2bn from institutional investors, while the remainder is from private clients, will scale up its “leadership” in the institutional investor market. This activity, initiated ten years ago, is based on Quilvest’s strengths in fixed income, via money market and treasury products of its Saint-Germain range.“The strategic objective,” says Stéphane Chrétien, chairman of the board of directors at Quilvest Banque Privée, “is to add to our product range aimed at these investors, to offer them equities funds, in addition, we are planning to move beyond the borders of France, to extend our client base.” In terms of equity funds, the firm already has an equity fund with Europe as its investment universe. “The fund, which is based on conviction-based risk management, is still young, and therefore does not have a sufficient track record to win over many investors.” In another area, the firm is currently considering creating a bond fund investing in high yield bonds, and a fund investing in convertible bonds.The international ambitions of Quilvest Banque Privée are based on its range of fixed-income based products. Those will be presented to institutional investors such as Luxembourg reinsurers and Swiss businesses for their cash management. Simultaneously, actors in the Belgian and German markets are also on the firm’s radar.Clearly, these ambitions will require increased means. Thus, the sales force at the firm, currently composed of four people in France, will be doubled in the next few years. “At the same time,” says Chrétien, “the construction of local sales teams, currently underway, will allow us to more easily cover the Belgian and Luxembourg markets.”As to Quilvest’s second “core” market in Paris, private clients, the firm is not planning to change something which is its strength: values close to those of a family office, as well as the alignment of clients’ interests with those of the bank’s shareholders.In terms of asset management, the creation of the new group will lead to some changes concerning the open architecture put in place by the company. “Concretely,” the head of the bank in Paris explains, “the selection of international funds will be undertaken in Luxembourg, which has a high level of expertise. But due to the specificity of the French market, with a high degree of presence of independent management firms, we are going to retain selection of French-registered funds in Paris.” Lastly, in terms of the exchange of expertise, Paris will be able to “take inspiration from the experience of Luxembourg via closed funds, offered by depository banks, aimed at high net worth families via a more effective wealth management organisation.”

Shareholders in Wesco Financial on Friday, 24 June approved a public takover bid from Berkshire Hathaway for 19.9% of its capital, a prelude to withdrawing the firm from public trading, at its AGM on 24 June, Agefi reports. The acquisition price totals about USD545m (EUR380m), The investment holding company for Warren Buffett already controlled 80.1% of Weco Financial before the operation.Buffett, 80, is planning to simplify the structure of Berkshire Hathaway in order to prepare to hand the firm on to his successor. The group’s management announced his plans in August 2010, after they were declared at an AGM in May of the same year.

Bruno Julien, CEO of Tocqueville Finance, had told Newsmangers that a new head of business development would soon be joining the French boutique, in a newly-created position. Newsmanagers has learnt that the new recruit is Eric Tajchman, who will be joining the asset management firm on Monday. Tajchman spent several years at ING Investment Managers, some of it in France, as deputy CEO in charge of Paris sales teams. In 2007, he moved to The Hague, where he was senior strategic partners director for Europe, and served major clients of the firm. At Tocqueville, Tajchmann will oversee French and European sales and marketing, with a team of 12 people. One of his missions will be to develop fund sales abroad. Julien would like to make international sales a major growth area, with the objective of doubling the firm’s assets, from EUR2bn currently, to EUR4bn by 2015.

The director of the securities professions at Société Générale Securities Services (SGSS), Alain Closier, describes the major strategic areas of the firm's activities to Newsmanagers. As Europe's number two provider, SGSS is relying on its domestic European client base to develop internationally.

The FundVest platform from Pershing (BNY Mellon group) for fund trading without fees (NTF) has extended its product range to funds from Altegris, Invesco and TIAA-CREF. It has been announced that the range of funds from Invesco available on the platform has been enlarged to include funds which it inherited from Van Kampen, which will triple the number of Invesco products available on FundVest.All of the funds are now available for broker-dealer clients and for IRAs (independent registered investment advisors) and their clients, via Pershing Advisor Solutions.The platform will offer access to 4,300 mutual funds, from 230 fund families. Since the beginning of the 2010-2011 fiscal year, FundVest has already added over 50 asset management firms to its list of providers whose funds may be traded, including Lord Abbette, Janus Funds and ING Fund Services.

According to a Forsa survey commissioned by comdirect bank, the Börsen-Zeitung reports, more than half of retail investors in Germany have never heard of “sustainable” investment products, and only one tenth of them know about “green” investments, though they do not use them. Only 2% have already subscribed to a sustainable investment product, while 15% have considered investing in such products, but have not yet made the choice to do so.

The Swedish government has launched an examination of its pension funds as a whole, which may result in the closure of two of them, IPE reports. Last year, the returns earned by the funds were already considered less than satisfactory. The Swedish finance minister has stated that the developments observed on the financial markets and the lessons learned from the past decade justified a re-examination of the system established ten years ago. At that time, the minister proposed a reconsideration of the recommendations which limit invesrtment in private equity and infrastructure. As of the end of December, assets in the five largest pension funds totalled nearly SEK900bn, or about EUR99.5bn.

Mid-sized hedge funds experienced the largest net asset growth in 2010, according to a Citigroup research cited by the Financial Times. Assets under management across managers with assets between USD1bn and USD5bn rose by USD85bn in 2010, versus a net increase of USD30bn among managers with an AUM of between USD5bn and USD10bn, and a net increase of USD72bn for funds with more than USD10bn under management.

GLG, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Man Group, has announced the closure, from 30 June 2011, of the GLG European Alpha Alternative Ucits fund, managed by Philippe Isvy and Pierre Valade. The temporary closure to new investors, which will involve no modification to the prospectus, follows a net inflow of USD1bn since the launch of the fund in 2009. The fund was also the first UCITS-compliant hedge fund made availabel by GLG, which has already closed two other funds since the beginning of this year.“The success of the product is largely the result of its highly readable management process (which involves a large proportion of pair trades), whose strengths are brought to the fore by the UCITS format, which offers daily liquidity. The strategy of the UCITS vehicle is also perfectly comparable to that of the offshore vehicle, which has been in operation since 2004. The performance is largely generated by stock-picking (over 90%). We aim for a performance objective of about 8% to 9% per year, with total annual volatility of about 4%,” Isvy, manager of the fund at GLG, explains.Concern to maintain performance has also been the motive for the closure of the fund. “We are not closing the fund due to questions of liquidity. But it is a good idea to keep transaction sizes under control, in order to maintain our ability to generate performance,” Isvy says.Due to institutional investors’ increased appetite for UCITS funds, the group has several new UCITS products in the works. “We are working on the launch of a UCITS long/short fund dedicated to US equities, and we are also considering creating a thematic (multi-sectoral) UCITS long/short fund. We are also considering launching a fund of house UCITS funds, whose asset allocation would be composed of all of our UCITS hedge funds. In addition to long/short equities, we might mention emerging markets (equities, fixed income, currencies), CTA, and macro,” says Olivier Dubost, managing director in charge of fund distribution for Man-GLG in France.

Deutsche Bank on 15 June launched the DB Platinum Sloane Robinson Asia fund, a UCITS-compliant version of its Sloane Robinson Asia Fund, as announced six months ago (see Newsmanagers of 21 December 2010).The new product, denominated in US dollars, is managed by the same team as the original fund, with Richard Chenevix-Trench and Jonathan Barnett as co-managers, with the same approach, a bottom-up construction of the portfolio with top-down risk management.Since its launch in January 1994, the Sloane Robinson Asia Fund has generated annual returns of 18.17%, with a tracking error of 19.54%, and maximal losses of 36.50%.CharacteristicsName: DB Platinum Sloane Robinson Asia FundISIN code: LU0559141501Management commission: 1.81%Performance commission: 20% with high watermark

Agefi reports, citing a spokesperson for the financial services firm Investec, that the firm, which is active in South Africa, Australia and the United Kingdom, is seeking to sell its private banking affiliate in Switzerland. The affiliate, which has offices in Zurich and Geneva, has GBP1.95bn in assets under management.

Lesley-Ann Morgan, who spent 18 years at the consultancy firm Towers Watson, most recently as senior investment consultant and head of the client delivery group, has been hired by Schroders for the newly created role of senior strategist within the global strategic solutions team.

Rothschild Private Banking & Trust has made two appointments to its investment team, both in newly created roles. The business has appointed Marco Schaller as head of service management & offering development and Andreas A. Bickel as head of strategic asset allocation and advisory, Switzerland. Andreas Bickel will head up both research operations and wealth management mandates for ultra high net worth (UHNW) clients. He will also be responsible for the management of the Rothschild Bank AG pension fund. Andreas Bickel joins Rothschild from Goldman Sachs, where he was head of the Portfolio Management Group, a member of the extended management committee and employee representative on the Foundation Board of the pension fund. Marco Schaller’s role was created to better address the complex and very individual needs of clients in Rothschild’s core markets. He holds an MBA from Cranfield University and is an expert on structured products. He joins Rothschild from UBS where he has held various positions in the investment and product areas.

Le groupe de services financiers, qui opère notamment en Afrique du Sud, en Australie et au Royaume-Uni, songe à céder sa filiale de banque privée en Suisse, a indiqué un porte-parole de l’établissement. Investec a mandaté Fenchurch Advisory Partners afin d’être conseillé sur cette opération, selon Mail on Sunday. La filiale, qui possède des bureaux à Zurich et Genève, affiche 1,95 milliard de livres d’actifs sous gestion.

A l’occasion de la transposition de la Directive OPCVM IV, l’AMF a simplifié les programmes d’activité des sociétés de gestion de portefeuille et les a recentrés sur les éléments essentiels pour l’analyse réalisée par le régulateur : organisation, moyens, commercialisation et dispositif de contrôle.

Nicolas Gouju, gérant de taux chez Groupama AM

Dans son rapport annuel, la Banque s’inquiète des pressions inflationnistes et remet la pression sur la Fed alors que le dix ans américain est à 2,86%

Une dégradation de la note souveraine des Etats-Unis à AA ou A conduirait à une hausse de respectivement 2% ou 3,2% du taux 10 ans américain qui contraindrait le Trésor à payer de 2,3 à 3,75 milliards de dollars supplémentaires en intérêts annuels, et une perte pour les investisseurs en obligations souveraines pouvant aller jusqu’à 100 milliards, indique le quotidien qui cite une analyse de la maison mère de Standard & Poor’s.