Mark Lovett, chief investment officer pour les actions britanniques chez Allianz RCM, quitte le groupe. Ses fonds seront repris par des gérants d’Allianz. Jeremy Thomas, qui pilote déjà Allianz RCM UK Growth Fund, prendra en charge le UK Unconstrained Fund et le UK Equity Fund.De son côté, Neil Dwane, chief investment officer pour l’Euroipe, prendra en charge la gestion du Charter European investment trust.

Dans le cadre d’une politique de réduction des coûts, John Ions, devenu CEO de Liontrust Asset Management en mai, a licencié avec effet immédiat, mais avec «gardening leave», l'équipe de gestion actions internationales que dirige Ross Hollyman, rapporte Investment Week..

Jupiter Asset Management a recruté Kathryn Langridge, de Lloyd George Asset Management, en tant que gérante marchés émergents. C’est en septembre qu’elle rejoindra le desk marches émergents de la société de gestion, qui représente environ 1,2 milliard de livres d’encours. L’équipe gère huit fonds dédiés à ces pays, couvrant l’Europe émergente, l’Asie hors Japon, la Chine et l’Inde. Cette gamme sera bientôt enrichie d’un fonds «marchés émergents» mondial qui sera géré par Kathryn Langridge. Chez Lloyd George Asset Management, la nouvelle recrue de Jupiter AM s’occupait de portefeuilles marchés émergents actions long only depuis 2007. Auparavant, elle avait passé 17 ans chez Invesco Perpetual, occupant diverses fonctions dans la gestion.

La gamme de six fonds Spectrum de Skandia, gérée en fonction d’objectifs de volatilité, a été lancée sur la plate-forme britannique Cofunds. Cela fait suite à la décision de Skandia de rendre les fonds disponibles auprès des conseillers financiers utilisant les outils d’analyse des risques de Distribution Technology.La gamme, gérée par Skandia Investment Group, a déjà attiré plus de 550 millions de livres d’encours via la plate-forme Skandia Investments Solutions et sa gamme de fonds de pension et d’assurance vie.

Gartmore vient de lancer le Gartmore AlphaGen Pan-European Equity Hedge Fund, un fonds long/short sur les actions européennes qui sera géré par John Bennett, lequel avait rejoint la société de gestion en début d’année en provenance de GAM. Ce gérant senior sur les actions européennes s’occupe aujourd’hui, avec son équipe, de 4 milliards d’euros en actions européennes. Le fonds sera géré avec un style similaire à celui du GAM European Equity Hedge Fund, que John Bennett a piloté entre janvier 1999 et septembre 2009. Il s’agit du premier hedge fund de Gartmore qui soit un compartiment du Qualified Investor Fund domicilité à Dublin. La décision de baser le fonds en Irlande a été prise en anticipation de la directive AIFM et face à la demande croissante des investisseurs pour des fonds onshore, précise un communiqué.

Le fournisseur de services financiers State Street a indiqué le 30 juin qu’il avait été sélectionné par Anchorage Advisors pour assurer des prestations à destination des hedge funds pour un montant d’environ 8 milliards de dollars gérés par Anchorage.

Jeudi soir, BlackRock a annoncé le lancement d’un nouveau mutual fund focalisé sur les actions aurifères du monde entier, le BlackRock World Gold Fund, qui est géré par Evy Hambro et Catherine Raw, deux experts de l'équipe londonienne des resssources naturelles et qui gère plus de 35 milliards de dollars.Par ailleurs, BlackRock repositionne son ETF détenant de l’or physique, le iShares COMEX Gold Trust (acronyme IAU sur NYSE Arca). Désormais, les investisseurs auront un accès plus large au marché de l’or et une souplesse plus grande dans l’allocation au métal jaune dans leur portefeuille, grâce à une liquidité accrue et à une baisse des frais.Le repositionnement se traduit par une diminution du prix de l’action et une augmentation du nombre d’actions en circulation grâce à une subdivision d’actions sur la base d’une pour 10 avec effet au 24 juin. Le «sponsor fee» a été réduit à 0,25 % contre 0,40 % au 1er juillet.

BNY Mellon vient de boucler l’acquisition de l’activité Global Investment Servicing de PNC, une société de dépositaire, de comptabilité de fonds, d’agent de transfert et de solutions d’externalisations pour les sociétés de gestion et les conseillers financiers. L’opération se monte à 2,31 milliards de dollars.

Mark Fetting, le directeur général de Legg Mason, est bien décidé à faire de la société de gestion américaine un acteur mondial. «Aujourd’hui, 35 % de nos actifs sont gérés pour le compte de clients basés en dehors des Etats-Unis. Mon objectif est de porter cette part à 50 %, voire plus», a-t-il déclaré au Financial Times Fund Management. En ce moment, il sillonne le monde afin de rencontrer actionnaires, clients et collègues, mais aussi pour regarder de plus près d’éventuelles sociétés à racheter. Legg Mason voudrait en effet s’agrandir dans les actions internationales et nombre de spécialistes de ce domaine sont basés en Europe, notamment à Londres. Mark Fetting confie avoir examiné Pioneer, la société de gestion d’UniCredit, mais ne se dit pas très intéressé.

Dans un communiqué, le capital investisseur Apax Partners SA a annoncé, vendredi 2 juillet, l’acquisition de BNP Paribas Personal Finance Belgium qui gère environ 500 millions d’euros d’encours de crédit à la consommation pour 300 000 clients, via des cartes revolving et des prêts à la consommation. La société compte 200 salariés. Cette transaction qui intervient dans le cadre des engagements de BNP Paribas envers la Commission Européenne à la suite de l’opération BNP Paribas Fortis sera finalisée sous réserve de l’approbation de l’opération par la Commission Européenne et de l’autorisation des entités régulatrices belges.

Selon L’Agefi suisse, Edouard Gueudet a été nommé vice-président de Hottinger & Cie. Il entre également au capital de la maison de banquiers privés fondée en 1786. Agé de 34 ans, il est actif au sein du groupe Hottinger & Cie Banquiers devenus Hottinger & Cie SA depuis 2007. D’abord chargé d’affaires, il est devenu fondé de pouvoir et coordinateur pour le groupe depuis 2009.

Invercaixa, an affiliate of La Caixa, has been the only Spanish fund management firm to post meaningful net subscriptions in June, with EUR811.37m, according to statistics from the Inverco association. In total, six firms had net inflows. Assets at Invercaixa represented less than EUR14.37bn. However, Santander Asset Management saw net outflows of EUR624.8m, and its assets were down to slightly under EUR25.25bn, but the hardest hit was BBVA, with net redemptions of EUR1.69bn. Assets there as of the end of June totalled EUR26.7bn.

Pension funds in the Netherlands have radically increased their use of external fund managers, according to the latest report from Dutch pensions regulator De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) cited by Citywire. Several pension funds deposited EUR174 billion into mutual funds which they had previously been managing internally. As a result of this, in 2009, the Dutch funds industry leapt to fifth position in the eurozone with total assets of just under EUR400 billion,.

Siemens is selling off a further 43.9% of the Munich-based asset management firm UBS Real Estate KAG to UBS Global Asset Management, bringing its stake in the former Siemens KAG up from 51% (acquired in late January 2005) to 94.9%. The transaction will be completed by October, and Siemens will retain the remaining 5.1% stake in UBS Real Estate KAG.

Hedge Week reports that the British management firm RAB Capital has appointed David Seex as chief executive officer of RAB Capital Asia. Seex will develop the activities of RAB Capital in Asia, and will oversee the Hong Kong office.

Mark Lovett, chief investment officer for UK equities at Allianz RCM, is leaving the group. His funds will be taken over by Allianz managers. Jeremy Thomas, who is already in charge of the Allianz RCM UJK Growth Fund, will take over the UK Unconstrained Fund and the UK Equity Fund. Neil Dwane, chief investment officer for Europe, will take over the Charter European investment trust.

The British investment management association (IMA) on 2 July announced that it is merging the UK Equity Income and UK Equity Income and Growth categories from 1 July. The professional association has also decided to reformulate and reinforce tests for the income portion of the category. The new UK Equity Income sector will now include funds which invest at least 80% of their assets in UK equities, and which aim for returns including distributed dividends equivalent to more than 110% of the performance of the FTSE All Share index at the end of the fund’s investment period. The objective of 110% should be achieved in three years, the IMA says. To assist retail investors and their advisors, the association also proposes to publish annual statistics on the performance of each fund on its website.

As in the previous fiscal year, SEB Asset Management on 1 July distributed an unchanged dividend of EUR2.10 per share to investors in the real estate fund SEB ImmoInvest. Redemptions from the fund have been frozen since 5 May 2010. Returns in the period ending on 31 March totalled 3.7%.

The asset management firm Deka Immobilien announced on Friday that it has sold the office property located at 19 Moskauer Straße in Düsseldorf for EUR97m, at a gain compared with its venal value.

From 16 August, Sauren will reopen subscriptions to the fund of funds Sauren Global Defensiv, which was hard closed on 31 March (see Newsmanagers of 22 January). Since then, the fund’s assets in cash, which represented 23% of the fund as of the end of first quarter, has been reduced to 13% of assets. As of the end of June, the Sauren group had EUR2.2bn in assets.

Mark Fetting, chief executive of Legg Mason, wants to turn the US investment manager into a global investment manager. “Now 35 per cent of our assets are held by non-US clients. My goal is to get that to 50:50 or even more,” he said to the Financial Times Fund Management. At the moment he is travelling around the world, meeting shareholders, clients and colleagues, but also window-shopping for potential acquisition targets. He wants to get more capability in international equity, and many of the best international equity investors are based in Europe, many located right here in London. Legg Mason glanced at Pioneer, Unicredit’s asset management subsidiary which is currently on the market, but “I can’t see us being very interested”, says Mr Fetting.

According to a study by four university professors (Debarshi Nandy, Nadia Massoud and Keke Song of the Schulich School of Business, Toronto, and Anthony Saunders of the Stern School of Business at New York University), at 105 US firms which borrowed money from hedge funds between January 2005 and July 2007 (before the US regulatory authorities required more information on short positions), there was an average increase of 74.8% in short-selling of shares in those companies in the five days preceding the announcement of the loan. In contrast, The Wall Street Journal reports, there was no observed increase in short positions on shares in firms which borrowed money from banks in the same period. Short positions increased by 28.4% preceding the announcement that loans from hedge funds had been renegotiated, compared with a decline of 17.8% before the same announcements about bank loans. But it is not certain that the lending hedge funds themselves were the ones assuming these short positions.

BNY Mellon has completed its acquisition of PNC’s Global Investment Servicing Inc. (GIS) business, a leading provider of custody, fund accounting, transfer agency and outsourcing solutions for asset managers and financial advisors. The purchase price was USD2.31 billion.

In a speech at the Fund Forum in Monaco last week, Eddy Wymeersch, chairman of the committee of European securities regulators (CESR), claimed that professionals and not regulators should be responsible for improving the transparency of UCITS-compliant ETFs and hedge funds, the Financial Times reports. He says some newcits are not really aimed at retail clients, and that there should be a mechanism to clearly indicate that retail investors should not invest in those products. On the subject of ETFs, Wymeersch would like to see issuers be required to provide more information about underlying assets, and to improve the information available on their websites. The CESR president also recommends that fund management firms improve their governance.

Fitch Ratings has released a criteria report outlining the agency’s approach to assigning ratings to asset managers on a national scale. For those countries where the capital markets and/or the investment management industry are relatively closed and, therefore, investment management practices may not be internationally comparable, and where there is demand for such ratings, Fitch may assign National Asset Manager Ratings to local asset managers or the local operations of international asset managers. It is important to note that each national rating scale is unique and reflects the particular characteristics of the local market concerned. National ratings are identified by the addition of a three-letter suffix for a specific country, such as ‘rus’ for National ratings in Russia. Fitch’s National Asset Manager Rating scale provides investors with a relative measure of an asset management organization’s vulnerability to operational and investment management failures relative to other managers in the same country. Managers are rated on a scale from ‘M1' to ‘M5', with a ‘M1' rating indicating the highest rating. Under the National Asset Manager Rating scale, a ‘M1' rating generally corresponds to asset management organizations with a strong financial standing, established track-record and processes/procedures at the forefront of local regulatory requirements, and market and client demand. Fitch may not assign its highest national scale asset manager ratings where it considers that even the strongest player in the local market has significant weaknesses relative to the agency’s expectations for that country. In assigning a National Asset Manager Rating, Fitch reviews the same elements as for internationally-rated managers and analyzes the following five categories: Company, financial conditions and staffing; risk management and controls; portfolio management; investment administration; and technology.

Skandia’s Spectrum range of risk-rated funds has launched on Cofunds. The launch follows Skandia’s decision to make the range available to advisers who use Distribution Technology’s Dynamic Planner risk profiling service. The range of funds, which are managed by Skandia Investment Group, is proving popular with advisers having already attracted over £550m via the Skandia Investments Solutions platform and its life and pensions fund range.

Jupiter Asset Management has appointed Kathryn Langridge as an emerging markets fund manager. She will join Jupiter’s emerging markets desk in September. Jupiter has now some GBP1.2bn invested in products covering many of the key emerging markets in the world. The emerging markets team manages eight mutual funds focusing on emerging Europe, Asia ex-Japan, China and India. Jupiter intends, in due course, to bolster this range by launching a global emerging markets fund for Kathryn to manage, subject to regulatory approval. At Lloyd George Asset Management, Kathryn Langridge has been managing long only emerging market equity investment portfolios since 2007. Before that, Kathryn worked for 17 years at Invesco Perpetual with roles including Head of Asian Investments and Head of International Equity Products.

Gartmore has launched the Gartmore AlphaGen Pan-European Equity Hedge Fund. The Fund will be managed by John Bennett, Senior Investment Manager, European Equities, who joined the asset management company at the beginning of the year from GAM. John Bennett and his team currently manage EUR4.0bn in European equities. The Fund will be managed in a similar style to the GAM European Equity Hedge Fund, which John ran since its inception in January 1999 until September 2009. This is Gartmore’s first hedge fund launched as a sub-fund of a Dublin-domiciled Qualified Investor Fund umbrella (QIF). The decision to domicile the fund in Dublin was made in anticipation of possible requirements arising in the forthcoming Alternative Investment Funds Directive and in line with the increased investor demand for alternatives funds to be domiciled in the European jurisdictions.

As part of a cost reduction measure, John Ions, who became CEO of Liontrust Asset Management in May, has dismissed the global equities management team led by Ross Hollyman, with immediate effect and a period of gardening leave, Investment Week reports.

On Thursday evening, BlackRock announced the launch of a new mutual fund focused on gold mining shares worldwide, entitled BlackRock World Gold Fund, which will be managed by Evy Hambro and Catherine Raw, two experts in the London natural resources team, which manages over EUR35bn. BlackRock is also repositioning its physical gold ETF, the iShares COMEX Gold Trust (acronym IAU on NYSE Arca). Investors will now have wider access to the gold market, and more flexibility in their allocation to gold in their portfolio, due to increased liquidity and lower fees. The repositioning will involve a reduction of the price per share in the fund, and an increase in the number of shares in circulation, through a 1-10 stock split, effective from 24 June. The sponsor fee has been reduced to 0.25% from 0.40% as of 1 July.