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17/05/2011

Julius Baer makes moves in Italy

Andrea Benenati, head of the Hong Kong office and CEO for northern Asia at the Julius Baer group, will be leaving the firm next month in order to found his own management firm in Hong Kong, Asian Investor reports. Alexandre Floersheim, head of investment advising services in Hong Kong, will also be leaving Julius Baer in order to assist Benenati with his new projects.
17/05/2011

Fidelity adds to sales staff in Germany

Kerstin Behnke, managing director and head of Northern Europe, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg at Gartmore Investment Services GmbH, will join Fidelity Investment Services GmbH on 20 June as head of distribution for Fidelity International for Germany. She will be responsible for banking clients, savings banks, IFAs, insurers and wealth managers.Christian Wrede, CEO of Fidelity International for Germany and managing director for Central Europe, points out that for Fidelity, Germany is a core market with major potential.
17/05/2011

WMAM hires chief economist

WestLB Mellon Asset Management (WMAM, EUR25.5bn in assets) has announced that since the beginning of May, Holger Sandte has become chief economist for the asset management boutique, which is a 50/50 joint venture of WestLB and BNY Mellon. It is a newly-created position.Since 2006, Sandte had been head of the economic research department at WestLB.
17/05/2011

German pension fund BVK adapts its SRI approach to each asset class

The largest German pension fund, Bayerische Versorgungskammer (BVK), which manages about EUR54bn in assets, claims that there can be no such thing as a general approach to SRI investment, Citywire Global reports.Each asset class has distinctive traits, and responsible investment strategies need to be adapted to each of them. In April this year, the pension fund announced plans to roll out SRI strategies for its entire portfolio, and also signed the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI).The head of asset management for the pension fund, André Heimrich, has announced that the group has opted for an engagement strategy, and adds that it is not possible to have a one-size-fits-all approach in this area. “It is impossible to have a general SRI approach for all asset classes,” says Heimrich. “A differentiated approach is necessary, since asset classes are very different from one another. For example, in fixed income, it is not possible to have direct engagement. You are required to take a different approach. We have therefore defined our own vision of the best possible approach for each asset class,” Heimrich says.This goes for bond investments as well, which represent about 65% of the total portfolio, and for which the pension fund uses SRI ratings from the oekom research agency to analyse each of its bond investments on the basis of criteria such as transparency.
17/05/2011

LGT plans to sell off wealth management activities in Germany

A spokesperson for LGT Bank has confirmed to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that the collapse of its proposed acquisition of BHF-Bank from Deutsche Bank (see Newsmanagers of 19 April) will prevent it from achieving its strategic objectives for private banking in Germany. The firm will therefore sell off wealth management in the country (135 employees in seven locations), but will retain its institutional asset management activities there.
17/05/2011

State Street appoints a global head of sales for alternative investments

The US State Street group on 16 May announced the appointment of Maria Cantillon as global head of sales for the Alternative Investment Solutions unit, dedicated to alternative investments. Cantillon will be based in London, and will report to Scott Fitzgerald, head of sales for the Global Services America unit at State Street. Cantillon was previously head of service activities dedicated to alternative investment managers and a member of the executive board at BNP Paribas Securities Services in London. Cantillon will oversee a team of 15 people, serving North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. She replaces Scott Fitzgerald, who has assumed new responsibilities since the end of last year. As of 31 March 2011, alternative assets under administration in the Alternative Investment Solutions arm of State Street totalled nearly USD770bn.
17/05/2011

Bernie Madoff's wine cellar up for auction

On 18 May, the New York auction house Morrel & Company will auction off the contents of Bernard Madoff’s wine cellar, Das Investment reports, citing AFP. The collection includes only 58 bottles, with an estimated value of EUR11,000, including a Château Petrus 1976 and a case of Mouton Rothschild.
17/05/2011

Morgan Stanley and Ascend Capital launch a UCITS III fund

Morgan Stanley has announced the launch of a UCITS III fund, which will be domiciled in Ireland, and will be available on the firm’s local platform, FundLogic Alternatives. The San Francisco-based management firm Ascend Capital, which manages about USD3.2bn in assets, has been appointed as “investment manager” for the product, MS Ascend Ucits Fund, which will be promoted by Morgan Stanley. The fund is a long/short strategy focusing on US equities, which aims to “maximise gains and simultaneously to reduce volatility,” a statement from Morgan Stanley says.
17/05/2011

Aviva plans to launch a fund dedicated to US equities

MoneyMarketing reports that Aviva Investors is planning to launch an income fund of US equities in the next few months. The fund will be managed by Henry Sanders, one of the founders of River Road Asset Management, which was acquired by Aviva early in 2010. The fund will replicate the Dividend All-Cap Value Strategy fund from River Road. The portfolio of the fund may include up to 50% large caps, and one third midcaps, while the remainder of the fund will be reserved for small caps.
17/05/2011

New ETF from HSBC launched on Euronext Paris

On 16 May, NYSE-Euronext announced that it has admitted the Irish ETF HSBC SP BRIC 40 ETF (IE00B5YLK706) from HSBC, which replicates the SP BRIC 40 index, and which charges fees of 0.60%, to trading on its Paris ETF platform.NYSE Euronext now lists 556 ETFs, replicating over 360 indices, 648 times. Since the beginning of the year, the stock market company added 107 listings of 81 ETFs on its European platforms.
17/05/2011

First Trust launches an automotive industry ETF

Mutual Fund Wire reports that First Trust Advisors has launched its first ETF allowing investors access to the automotive industry. The First Trust NASDAQ Global Auto Index Fund, which has been available on the Nasdaq since 10 May, tracks the performance of 30 companies active in the automotive sector.
17/05/2011

Newcits are not a new class of products, says EFAMA

The European Fund and Asset Management Association (Efama) has published a report on the evolving investment strategies of UCITS. A working group was convened to examine the increasing sophistication of these products. Traditionally, UCITS funds have been regarded worldwide as plain vanilla investment funds which only employ traditional investment strategies. However, as allowed by the UCITS III Directive of 2001, there are nowadays more and more UCITS funds that use a wider range of techniques and instruments with the aim of managing the trade-off between risk and return. One of the main examples is using derivative techniques to generate “absolute” returns to the investors. The investor demand for these types of products has significantly increased since the financial markets crisis. In particular, there is clear investor desire to achieve yield uplift relative to the low returns on deposit accounts. At the same time there is a demand from investors for capital security. Commenting on the publication of the report Peter De Proft, director general of Efama, said: “The “Newcits” label was coined by the media and should not be adopted by the industry or regulators. We do not believe that it is necessary or beneficial to have a specific label for these funds. The universe of UCITS is evolving but this is encompassed by the UCITS regulatory framework. Moreover, the regulatory requirements and supervisory tools are being developed, especially under the UCITS IV framework, which enters into force on 1 July 2011”.
17/05/2011

DWS freezes subscriptions and redemptions for db ImmoFlex

On 16 May, DWS Investments (Deutsche Bank) has announced that it will be suspending subscriptions and redemptions for its open-ended real estate fund of funds db ImmoFlex (EUR259m) until further notice, since a large portion of its portfolio is invested in open-ended real estate funds from which redemptions have been frozen, and that freeze is likely to continue for some time to come.Liquidity in the db ImmoFlex fund is insufficient to meet all redemption demands; in order to satisfy those, the fund would need to sell assets at unjustifiable markdowns, which would result in a considerable deterioration in the quality of the portfolio (14 funds, invested in about 500 properties in more than 20 countries), as well as the risk structure of the fund.The fund, which has exclusively retail clients, is said to have undergone net outflows of EUR50m since the beginning of the year, and its liquidity levels are said to have fallen to 7% (while the legal minimum is 5%).
17/05/2011

Swiss government wants to toughen hedge fund regulations

The Swiss government is planning to announced proposed legislation this summer, which would bring Switzerland into line with the European directive on hedge fund management (AIFM) from 2013, thus toughening the regulations applicable to hedge funds and private equity funds in Switzerland, but allowing Swiss management firms continued access to EU markets, Handelsblatt reports.The move could be fatal for smaller hedge funds, due to the financial costs related to the license application process, auditing and personnel costs for recruitments to handle compliance and risk monitoring. Some experts claim that no hedge fund will be able to be profitable with less than CHF100m in assets, and that the regulatory changes will work to the advantage of London.In Switzerland there are now about 140 hedge fund management firms, with total assets of about CHF20bn.
17/05/2011

GAM repatriates management of an emerging markets debt fund

Following the acquisition of the bond and currency markets specialist Augustus Asset Managers by GAM, the management of the GAM Star Pharo Emerging Market Debt & FX fund will be brought back in-house, and will be given to Paul McNamara, investment director at GAM. The fund will become known as the GAM Star Emerging Markets Total Return. The fund had previously been managed by Pharo Global Advisors Limited. The outsourcing contract for the management of the fund will conclude on 1 June. McNamara and his team joined GAM following its acquisition of Augustus Asset Managers in 2009. The asset management firm invests in emerging markets debt, and as of 30 April 2011, McNamara managed about USD7.6bn in assets. The fund will continue to aim for total returns 3% to 5% higher than the JP Morgan EMBI Global Diversified Composite index, and will continue to be managed with a top-down macroeconomic style which prioritises active risk management.
17/05/2011

Assets up at Renta 4

The Spanish financial services firm Renta 4, which in February decided to acquire the Banco Alicantino de Comercio (see Newsmanagers of 9 February), on 31 March had record assets under custody and management of EUR5.7bn, 13.1% more than one year previously. Pre-tax profits were up 5.8% in first quarter compared with January-March 2010, at EUR2.9m.The firm has also announced the appointment of Antonio Fernández Vera, who remains president of Renta 4 Pensiones, a position he has held since March 2007, as president of the asset management affiliate Renta 4 Gestora.
17/05/2011

Amundi Iberia selects RBC Dexia IS for automated administration of its funds

The Spanish affiliate of RBC Dexia Investor Services, RBC Dexia Activos, has won an automated fund administration mandate for 46 investment funds from Amundi Iberia (EUR750m). Under the contract, Amundi will outsource administration of its products, while retaining complete control of the process. By the terms of the agreement, RBC Dexia has taken a transfer of three employees from Amundi Iberia.
17/05/2011

Change in shareholder structure on the table for DNCA Finance

Rumours that the Banca Leonardo group may soon be abandoning its asset management business in France, selling off a part of its stake in DNCA Finance to a US investment fund, may die out this week. According to information obtained by Newsmanagers, the asset management firm based in the rue de la Paix in Paris must decide by 20 May whether or not to sign an agreement for an entry into its capital by one of the oldest private equity funds, TA Associates. The private equity fund already holds 16 stakes in asset management firms. If the two parties reach an agreement, TA Associates would become the largest shareholder in the firm, with a larger stake than Jean-Charles Mériau, chief investment officer (see Newsmanagers of 7 April 2011) and Jacques Chatel, chairman.
17/05/2011

Daniel Roy joins La Banque Postale

La Banque Postale announced on Monday, 16 May that from 1 June 2011, Daniel Roy has joined the executive board at the bank. He will serve as advisor to the board, in charge of development of wealth management. Roy, 54, had been chairman of the board at HSBC Banque Privée France since 2007 (see Newsmanagers of 16 May 2011), after joining HSBC in 2006. For the previous five years, he had been director of the Asset Management unit at CDC Ixis.
17/05/2011

Soros sells off stakes in gold, BofA and JPMorgan

In first quarter, the hedge fund managed by George Soros sold off 4.7 million shares in the SPDR Gold Trust, in which as of the end of March he held only 49,400 shares, worth USD6.9m, the Wall Street Journal reports. The fund has also unloaded 9.4 million shares in NovaGold Resources, and has considerably reduced its allocation to shares in Bank of America (BofA) and JP Morgan.However, it has tripled its exposure to Citigroup to 29.4 million shares, and scaled up its exposure to Wells Fargo by a factor of six, to 3.5 million shares.
17/05/2011

Caceis supports Tobam in international development

The French Caceis group, specialised in financial services for institutional investors, on 16 May announced that it has set up a range of middle-office services with the management firm Tobam, entitled Prime MO®, in order to assist clients in their international development. The Prime MO® range operates in open architecture, and connects all clients who have selected Tobam worldwide, including recent additions in the United States, on a single middle-office platform.Caceis, which is depository, custodian and fund valuation provider for Tobam’s French-registered funds, says in a statement that it has been the asset servicing partner for Tobam since its creation.As of the end of 2010, assets under custody at Caceis totalled EUR2.379trn, while assets under administration totalled EUR1.150trn.
17/05/2011

Société Générale Private Banking (Switzerland) pays price for strong franc

Société Générale Private Banking (Switzerland) suffered due to the strong Swiss franc in 2010. The entity has announced an 8.7% decline in its net banking income, to CHF233.6m, and net profits of CHF40.7m, down from CHF55.4m in 2009. Assets under management were also negatively affected by the strength of the Swiss currency. As of the end of December 2010, assets totalled CHF25bn, compared with CHF27bn one year earlier. The decline of the US dollar and the euro against the franc led to a mechanical decline of CHF2.9bn, while the performance of the markets brought in gains of CHF1.3bn, the bank has told Le Temps. Subscriptions were positive to the tune of CHF360m.
17/05/2011

Fabien Madar will also cover Northern Europe for Pioneer

Fabien Madar, head for western Europe at Pioneer Investments, has had his responsibilities extended to include the Netherlands and Northern Europe. He replaces Jillert Bloom, the former head for Nothern Europe, who left the asset management firm of the Italian UniCredit group at the end of April. Madar is based in Paris, and will continue to cover France, Switzerland and Luxembourg. For the Netherlands and Northern Europe, he will work closely with Sander van de Giesen, head of sales. A country head will also be recruited. “We have begun the search for a new ‘Country Manager’ for the Netherlands and Scandinavia, and strong candidates have already expressed interest,” says Madar.
17/05/2011

Apollo Multi AM offers two new funds

The British management firm Apollo Multi Asset Management will launch two new funds in early June, the IFDS Apollo Multi Asset Defensive and the IFDS Apollo Multi Asset Adventurous, Investment Week reports. The two funds will be structured as Non-UCITS Retail Schemes (NURS), which will be able to invest in ETFs, structured products, real estate, and directly, as well as in hedge funds.
17/05/2011

Schroders recruits a head from BlackRock

Schroders has announced the appointment of Kate Jones as head of investment services, taking investment responsibility for developing the next generation global investment operating platform. She joins from BlackRock where she was head of structured solutions portfolio management for Europe. In this capacity, she was responsible for portfolio management of liability driven investment, asset allocation mandates and synthetic overlays. With the rapid growth in its multi-asset, fixed income and LDI businesses, Schroders is further enhancing its global investment management and research platform embracing all asset classes. Kate Jones will report to Alan Brown, group chief investment officer,
17/05/2011

Jupiter AM adds to fund of funds team

Jupiter Asset Managemetn has announced the arrival of Amanda Sillars and David Lewis at Merlin, its team dedicated to funds of funds. Sillars, who will become a fund selection specialist from 18 May, was previously investment director and executive director at JP Morgan Asset Management. Lewis, for his part, joins the team as assistant manager from 18 May. He previously held the same position in the Private Clients & Charities division of Jupiter. The Merlin team manages more than GBP6bn in six portfolios, a statement says.
17/05/2011

Nouveau recul des achats de valeurs à long terme américaines

Les Etats-Unis ont attiré en mars des flux de capitaux nets à long terme de 24 milliards de dollars, après 27,2 milliards (révisé) en février, d’après le département américain du Trésor. En incluant les titres à court terme, les flux nets ont augmenté à 116 milliards de dollars, contre un chiffre révisé en baisse à 95,6 milliards le mois précédent.
17/05/2011

Le rachat de DNCA Finance bientôt signé

Le fonds de capital investissement américain TA Associates pourrait signer dans les prochains jours, voire dès vendredi, son entrée au capital de DNCA Finance, selon des sources proches. Banca Leonardo, qui détient aujourd’hui environ 70% du capital de la société de gestion française, conservera une participation minoritaire. Jean-Charles Mériaux et Joseph Chatel, respectivement directeur de la gestion et président, resteront les deuxième et troisième actionnaires (L’Agefi Quotidien du 7 avril). La transaction valorise la société entre 300 et 400 millions d’euros.
17/05/2011

EQT Partners vise haut

Le quotidien indique que la société de private equity en partie détenue par la famille suédoise Wallenberg entend lever 4,25 milliards d’euros pour un fonds européen. Il s’agirait d’une des pus importantes opérations depuis l’émergence de la crise. Un premier bouclage pourrait avoir lieu d’ici le mois de juillet, croit savoir le quotidien citant plusieurs sources proches. EQT Partners offrirait une ristourne de 10% sur sa commission de gestion de 1,5% des encours gérés au bénéfice des investisseurs qui rejoindront le fonds avant ce premier closing. Un signe clair selon le quotidien de la victoire d’investisseurs tels les fonds de pension ayant milité pour une baisse des frais auprès des sociétés de private equity.

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