Société Générale Securities Services (SGSS) a annoncé mardi 4 septembre avoir achevé le transfert des activités internationales de back-office titres de Cheuvreux pour Kepler Cheuvreux, société de services financiers d’Europe, spécialisée dans les services de conseil et d’intermédiation dans le secteur de la gestion des investissements.SGSS avait obtenu en novembre 2012 ce contrat auprès de Kepler Capital Markets, dans le cadre de son projet de rachat de Crédit Agricole Cheuvreux. SGSS a été retenu pour fournir une solution complète et personnalisée de compensation et de règlement-livraison pour gérer d’importants volumes d’opérations pour la globalité de l’activité internationale de Kepler Cheuvreux sur les marchés actions. Le processus de transfert impliquait d’intégrer d’une part les activités institutionnelles, et d’autre part celles de banques de réseaux, qui ont été migrées en six mois, indique un communiqué.Selon les termes du mandat, SGSS fournit des services de compensation et de règlement-livraison sur 29 marchés internationaux.

Allianz Global Investors a confié son fonds BRIC Stars, de 568 millions de dollars, à sa filiale marchés émergents basée à San Diego après le départ de Michael Konstantinov, rapporte Citywire. L’équipe californienne se compose de huit personnes et est dirigée par Kunal Ghosh. Elle gère actuellement 1,2 milliard de dollars dans des fonds actions émergentes.Allianz a par ailleurs élargi l’univers du fonds BRIC, lequel pourra désormais investir jusqu’à un tiers de ses actifs dans les marchés émergents mondiaux autres que les pays BRIC.

La société de gestion Primonial REIM spécialisée dans les investissements immobiliers vient de recruter Virginie Walckenaer en tant qu’asset manager senior.Elle renforce l’équipe de Philippe Graziani en charge du patrimoine immobilier et sera plus particulièrement en charge du patrimoine détenu par les SCPI etOPCI d’Immobilier Tertiaire.La nouvelle recrue a débuté sa carrière en 2005 chez Halverton REIM comme gérante puis a rejoint en 2009 Invesco Real Estate.

Au titre du premier semestre 2013, CCR Asset Management publie des encours sous gestion en hausse de 12,28% par rapport au 31 décembre 2012, à 6,296 milliards d’euros. Les actifs sous gestion ont principalement bénéficié des souscriptions nettes, et plus accessoirement de la hausse des marchés. La collecte nette en gestion d’actifs s’élève à 589,8 millions d’euros au premier semestre 2013, principalement grâce à une forte collecte auprès du segment institutionnel qui s’élève à 407,7 millions d’euros et de la clientèle de la banque privée UBS. La collecte hors produits monétaires s’établit à 315,4 millions d’euros dont 189 millions en gestion diversifiée et 181 millions sur les produits de taux. Les fonds actions ont attiré 49 millions d’euros.

Nordea, qui gère 219 milliards d’euros d’encours, s’est attiré les critiques d’anciens salariés pour avoir omis de dire aux investisseurs que Peter Eichler, gérant de son fonds North American Growth entre juillet 2008 et octobre 2012, faisait l’objet d’une enquête aux Etats-Unis, rapporte le Financial Times fund management (un article avait déjà été publié sur le sujet par le journal). Mais Jakob Essen, le responsable des actions de Nordea, répond qu’il n’est pas prévu d’informer les souscripteurs du fonds au sujet des accusations contre Peter Eichler et Aletheia, la société de gestion qu’il a fondée et qui a fait faillite. Nordea explique que les problèmes juridiques et les accusations concernant Aletheia n’ont eu que peu d’incidence sur la performance du fonds. Sur la période où Peter Eichler gérait le fonds, ce dernier a perdu 7 % tandis que son indice de référence, le Russell 1000 Growth, a bondi de 24 %.

At its sixth annual ETF-Forum, a meeting between primarily institutional investors, issuers and experts, Deutsche Börse announced that assets in the over 1,000 ETFs listed on the XTF segment of its Xetra electronic platform now total a record of over EUR210bn, 20% more than one year ago.Martin Reck, managing director, cash market at Deutsche Börse, says that XTF has a market share of 32% in Europe, which puts in in first place on the continent. Xetra puts about 220 partners in contact with over 4,000 traders in 18 countries. On average, trading volumes for ETFs in Frankfurt total about EUR11bn, with about 70% of these orders coming from aborad.

Last month, according to the BlackRock Institute, ETPs worldwide saw net outflows of over USD15bn, compared with net subscriptions of USD43.8bn in July. These were the highest levels of net redemptions ever posted, while the previous record of EUR13.4bn was in January 2010.In the first eight months of the year, the sector nonetheless shows net subscriptions of USD128.1bn, compared with USD139.9bn in January-August 2012. Equity ETPs posted inflows of USD138.5bn, and bonds attracted USD18.9bn, while commodity ETPs saw net outflows of USD31.9bn.As of 31 August, assets in 4,918 ETPs totalled USD2.114trn, compared with USD2.64bn for the 2,164 ETPs counted as of the end of July. By comparison, assets under management by ETPs totalled USD1.944trn as of the end of December, and USD1.761ren as of 31 August 2012.For Europe and its 2,142 ETPs as of the end of August, assets totalled USD376.7bn, or 17.8% of the global market (while the 1,504 funds in the United States have assets of USD1.4883trn, or a market share of 70.4%). European products, however, have attracted net subscriptions of USD0.7bn in August, and USD7.8bn in the first eight months of the year, while US ETPs showed net outflows of USD17.5bn last month, but posted inflows of USD97.5bn in January-August.

The salary of the best-paid director at the Euorpean unit of Pimco, whose name remains unknown, was reduced by 30% in 2012, to GBP20.9m, despite an increase in pre-tax profits at the firm of 54%, to GBP22.93m, Financial News reports. Pimco opened an office in London in 1998, and has seven directors, who received a total of GBP50.24m, compared with GBP57.1m in 2011.

Allianz Global Investors has been working relentlessly to get out of the shadow of its sister company Pimco, Financial Times fund management observes. In first quarter 2013, net inflows from third party clients totalled EUR3.1bn, compared with EUR500m in first quarter 2012. Elizabeth Corley, CEO of AGI, largely attributes the rebound in inflows to a reorganisation of the group, which is expected to lead to a reduction of its legal entities from 35 to 14. In Europe, the process is nearly complate, and by March 2014, the firm will have only one entity. That has allowed AGI to invest in new capacities, such as infrastructure and emerging market debt, and to strengthen some areas, such as Asian bonds and multi-asset classes.

Rien ne change, tout change... Sans perdre son nom d’origine ni même sa structure apparente avec la présence de centres de gestion en Europe et en Asie, Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management évolue sensiblement. Dans un communiqué à paraître ce matin, le groupe annonce en effet avoir procédé à la globalisation de son métier de gestion d’actifs autour d’un modèle multi-spécialiste (voir Newsmanagers du 04/07/2013). Dans ce cadre, son offre globale s’appuie sur six centres de gestion - basés en France, en Suisse, en Allemagne, à Hong Kong, au Luxembourg et au Royaume-Uni - à partir desquels la maison distingue des segments d’expertise comme la gestion actions (européennes et américaines), les obligations, la multigestion, le currency overlay, l’allocation d’actifs ou encore la gestion quantitative. En pratique, Paris voit la gestion des obligations crédit et convertibles rapprochées. De son côté, la partie taux passe sous la coupe du département chargé de l’allocation d’actifs. Par ailleurs, la multigestion alternative est désormais basée en Suisse, même si deux personnes dédiées à la multigestion alternative devraient rester dans la capitale pour faire profiter d'éventuelles opportunités sur le marché français. A priori, le changement d’ensemble paraît mince. Sauf que cette nouvelle organisation doit permettre aux équipes de vente de prendre conscience des différents atouts en matière de gestion dont dispose la maison, ce qui, semble-t-il, n'était pas le cas auparavant. De fait, il s’agit clairement d’une rationalisation dont les forces commerciales doivent profiter en ayant accès à tous les produits de la maison, quel que soit l’endroit où ils sont gérés. Outre Laurent Tignard, Global CEO Asset Management qui dirige donc l’ensemble des activités de gestion d’actifs du groupe, la nouvelle organisation globalisée est également encadrée par Philippe Uzan qui a été nommé directeur des gestions long only, Alexandre Col qui est directeur des multigestions et Guillaume Poli, directeur du développement asset management groupe. Très logiquement, le groupe envisage également d’enrichir sa sicav luxembourgeoise en y incluant les fonds phares de la maison. Dans ce cadre, Edmond de Rothschild Tricolore Rendement (1,5 milliard d’euros) Edmond de Rothschild US Value & Yield (1,2 milliard d’euros), Edmond de Rothschild Europe Synergy (1,4 milliard d’euros) et enfin, la gamme de fonds obligations convertibles qui totalise plus de 1,5 milliard d’euros, doivent venir étoffer l’offre de l’OPCVM. Edmond de Rothschild rappelle que la clientèle en gestion d’actifs du groupe se compose de 44% d’institutionnels, de 27% de distributeurs et de 29% de clients des banques privées du Groupe. «Cet équilibre sera maintenu et orchestré par les équipes commerciales locales sous la responsabilité de Guillaume Poli», est-il indiqué.

In a statement which appeared yesterday, the Edmond de Rothschild group announced that it has initiated a globalisation of its asset management profession on a multi-specialist model (see Newsmanagers of 04/07/2013) at Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management. As a part of that move, its global range will be based in six management centres, in France, Switzerland, Germany, Hong Kong, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom, from which the firm will serve distinct areas of expertise such as equity management (European and US), bonds, multi-management, currency overlay, asset allocation, and quantitative management.In practice, Paris will see credit and bond management merged. For its part, the fixed income portion will become a part of the department responsible for asset allocation. Alernative multi-management is now based in Switzerland, although the two people dedicated to alternative multi-management will remain in the French capital to take advantage of potential opportunities on the French market.This new organisation is expected to allow sales teams to highlight the various advantages of the firm in terms of the management the firm offers, which had apparently not been the case previously. This rationalisation will help sales teams to have access to all products from the group, regardless of the place where they are managed.In addition to Laurent Tignard, Global CEO for Asset Management, who heads the asset management activities of the group, the new globalised operation is also overseen by Philippe Uzan, who has been appointed as head of long-only management, Alexandre Col, who is head of multi-management, an Guillaume Poli, head of asset management development for the group. Logically, the group is also planning to enrich its Luxembourg Sicav, to include the star funds from the firm. That will include Edmond de Rothschild Tricolore Rendement (EUR1.5bn), Edmond de Rothschild US Value & Yield (1EUR1.2bn), Edmond de Rothschild Europe Synergy (EUR1.4bn) and lastly, the range of convertible bond funds, with a total of over EUR1.5bn).

The wealth management firm Partners Group has announced the sale of the Austrian firm AHT Cooling to the investment group Bridgepoint for EUR585m. Partners Group had invested in AHT Cooling in January 2007, with Quadriga Capital, for its clients, a statement released on 3 September states. The transaction is still subject to approval by the supervisory authorities. It is expected to be finalised in the next few months. Partners Group is aiming for a return on its investment of about 25%.

The Japanese government pension fund (GPIF), whose assets under management total about USD1.2bn, has awarded mandates for the management of foreign equities to eight fund managers, two of which are French firms, Amundi Japan and Natixis AM Japan (via Harris Associates Investment Trust). The details of allocations awarded, including amounts, have not been disclosed. The other managers selected are MFS Investment Management (Massachusetts Financial Services), Nillo Asset Management Japan (Intech Investment Management), BNY Mellon Asset Management (Walter Scott & Partners), Muizuho Asset Management (Wells Capital), Mitsubishi UFJ Trust Bank (Aberdeen Asset Management), and Mitsubishi UFJ Trust Bank (Baillie Gifford Overseas). The pension fund is in the process of completing the award of external mandates for the management of Japanese equities. GPIF also announced before the weekend that in the first quarter of its 2013 fiscal year (April to June), it earned a net return of 1.85%.

Nordea, which has EUR219bn in assets under management, has attracted criticism from former employees for failing to tell investors that Peter Eichler, manager of its North American Growth fund from July 2008 to October 2012, is under investigation in the United States, Financial Times fund management reports (an article had already been published on this subject by the newspaper). But Jakob Essen, head of equities at Nordea, responds that there are no plans to inform subscribers of the fund about the accusations against Eichler and Aletheia, the asset managemetn firm which he founded, and which has gone bankrupt. Nordea explains that the legal troubles and accusations concerning Aletheia had no impact on the performance of the fund. In the period when Eichler was manager of the fund, it lost 7%, while its benchmark index, the Russell 1000 Growth, was up 24%.

JP Morgan Asset Management will modernise its trading systems, Lee Bray, head of trading for Asia since April this year, has told Asian Investor. After examining trading and order exeuction systems, the modernisation of systems should be carried out during the next year. It will allow for better processing of block trades, Bray says.

Morgan Stanley has recruited two senior professionals for its team dedicated to bonds in Asia, Citywire reports. Geoff Kentrick and Kewei Yang, who had both previously worked at Nomura, the former in London, and the latter in Singapore, have joined Morgan Stanley at its Hong Kong offices. Kendrick is appointed as head of strategy for local fixed income and Asian currencies. Yang, who will report to Kendrick, will supervise interest rate strategies in the Asia-Pacific region.

Achim Küssner, CEO of Schroder Investment Management GmbH, has announced that Bernd Klapper, director of distribution for southern Germany at Threadneedle Investments Germany for three years, has been recruited to serve in the same role at Schroders. He will be more particularly responsible for retail clients, banking partners, brokerage pools, IFAs, funds of funds and wealth managers. In his new role, Klapper will report to Joachim Nareike, head of distibution at Schroders Germany.Before joining Threadneedle, Klapper was head of distribution at the SRI asset management firm Ökoworld Lux SA.

KKR and Permira, the funds which own the German media group ProsiebenSat.1, are selling 11% of capital, or 25 million shares, valued at EUR800m, through an accelerated order book construction procedure, according to Agefi. After the sale, KKR and Permira will retain a combined stake of 33% in ProSiebenSat.1.

The open-ended real estate fund DEGI Europa (DE0009807800), whose liquidation was decided in October 2010 and is expected to be completed by 30 September 2013, sold a property located in Hoofdorp, in the Netherlands, to PPF Real Estate on 30 August. The sale totalled EUR47m, although the expert valuation of the property had been at EUR53.9m.As a result, the net asset value of the DEGI Europa fund is reduced by 20 cents to EUR24.81, according to Aberdeen Asset Management Deutschland. The liquidity share of the fund has increased as a result of the most recent sales to 27%, while leverage rises to 13.3% from 12.2%.

The data provider Morningstar on 3 September published the first issue of its Financial Services Observer, a research work which evaluates the competitive movements in the wealth management sector in the United States, responses provided to developments in the sector in the wake of the financial crisis, and the best-positioned firms to profit from the new situation. The study funds that the strongest financial services firms are those which work for ultra-high net worth (UHNW) clients, with over USD20m in investable assets, and firms which offer a range of financial products which is difficult for the competition to reproduce. These firms, such as Northern Trust and Morgan Stanley, also have strong brands and good reputations, as well as high transfer costs. The high net worth client segment, which means investors with total assets of USD1m to USD20m, is increasingly competitive. US households in this segment control over 50% of US investable assets, and the wealth controlled by this segment is expected to increase at an annual pace of 7.3% until 2015. But it is also increasingly difficult to stand out in this segment with an original product range. Morningstar estimates that Raymond James is well-positioned to do well in this segment, due to its specific business model based on advisers. In addition to major trends in this sector, the study offers specific analyses of 10 firms: Ameriprise Financial, Bank of America, Charles Schwab, Morgan Stanley, Northern Trust, PNC Financial Services Group, Raymond James Financials, TD Ameritrade, US Bancorp and Wells Fargo.

Allianz Global Investors has assigned its BRIC Stars fund, with USD568m in assets, to its emerging market affiliate based in San Diego, following the departure of Michael Konstantinov, Citywire reports. The California-based team has eight members, and is led by Kunal Ghosh. It currently has USD1.2bn in assets under management in emerging market equity funds. Allianz has also extended the universe of its BRIC fund, which may now invest up to one third of its assets in global emerging markets in countries other than the BRIC countries.

The asset management firm Zencap Asset Management, which invests in the universe of credit opportunities emerging from the crisis of 2007-2009 and banking deleveraging, on Tuesday, 4 September announced that this summer it launched a fund which aims to invest in real estate mezzanine debt in Western Europe. The contractual FCP invests in the mezzanine segment, a statement says. While many real estate operators are seeing perfectly healthy transactions blocked due to a lack of financing, the new fund aims to fill the void which exists between equity investors and senior debt provided by banks or senior real estate debt funds. In practice, the strategy of Zencap Asset Management is to focus on small or mid-cap companies, which are meeting with the most difficulties in financing new projects, and to form partnerships with them which highly align interests, to aim for mezzanine returns of about 10%. The first investment made by the fund in August is in a primarily residential real estate development in Germany, in partnership with a local specialist operator. The fund from Zencap Asset Management provided mezzanine debt, to fill the gap between the available banking debt and the contribution of owners’ equity from its partner. In addition to this fund, Zencap Asset Management, which is a division of the OFI group, has 6 funds under management specialised in investment in private debt: structured / securitised debt, regulatory captial transactions, and real estate debt.

The Swiss Bankers Association called on September 3 for the clean money strategy to be dropped. The industry wants to help to shape international standards in future, and comply with them."We bear the sole responsibility in the coming years for acting in such a way that we live up to our responsibility to clients, staff, the economy, society and the next generation of bankers,» said Patrick Odier, Chairman of the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA), at the annual media conference before the Swiss Bankers Day in Zurich.He noted that banks had adapted their strategy to the new operating environment: «Our strategy can be summed up in the words tax compliance, international standards, growth through open markets and fair competition."The SBA also clearly rejects an excessive Swiss finish to regulation.Patrick Odier expressed optimism for the future, based on the good economic starting point the banks enjoy, and the fact that developing and expanding new business areas such as asset management, trade financing and renminbi services will allow the financial centre to grow over the long term.

Real estate management operations at Bankia, which had previously been provided by its affiliate Habitat, will be sold for a total of at least EUR40m, and at most EUR90m to the US private equity firm Cerberus, according to a filing to the CNMV cited by Cinco Días. Habitat has real estate assets under management of EUR12bn, and Cerberus will also inherit EUR36.6bn in Bankia real estate assets under management, which have been transferred to the “bad bank” Sareb. Real estate properties in the strict sense will remain the property of Bankia.The transaction allows Bankia to transfer a total of 457 personnel to Cerberus, and thus to achieve a part of its plan to cut 4,500 jobs.

In first half 2013, CCR Asset Management has announced assets under management up 12.28% compared with 31 December 2012, at EUR6.296bn. Assets primarily benefited from net subscriptions, and more secondarily to rising markets. Net inflows for asset management total EUR589.8m in first half 2013, largely due to strong inflows from the institutional segment, totalling EUR407.7m, and UBS private banking clients. Inflows from areas other than money market products total EUR315.4m, of which EUR189m are in diversified management, and EUR181m in fixed income. Equity funds attracted EUR49m.

The European Securities and Market Authority (ESMA) has published its advice to the European Commission on the equivalence of the regulatory regimes for OTC derivatives clearing, central counterparties (CCPs), and trade repositories (TR) of non-EU countries with the European Markets Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR). ESMA has assessed the equivalence of the regulatory regimes of Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland and the US. It finds the regulatory regimes of Australia and Switzerland for CCPs equivalent to EU rules. Conditional equivalence is proposed to the following regimes: •Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and the US for CCPs;•the US and Japan for central clearing, requirements for non-financial counterparties and risk mitigation techniques for uncleared trades; and•the US for TRs.The European Commission is expected to use ESMA’s technical advice to prepare possible equivalence decisions. Where it adopts such a decision, certain provisions of EMIR may be disapplied in favour of equivalent third-country rules.For Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, South Korea and Switzerland, ESMA will be delivering its advice on areas not yet covered by 1 October 2013.

GSO, the credit unit of Blackstone, on Tuesday reported that it had raised USD5bn (nearly EUR3.8bn) for its second support fund to provide capital solutions outside the market to companies which are facing liquidity needs or which need to undertake significant transformations of their capital structures. According to Agefi, the new fund, GSO Capital Solutions Fund II, was oversubscribed by investors, and outclasses the first fund of its type (USD3.25bn raised in 2010).

After returns of 0.21% in April and 0.53% in May, followed by a loss of 1.37% in June, UCITS hedge funds have seen average gains in July of 0.80%, and again losses of 0.40% in August, according to the Swiss firm Alix Capital. The UCITS Alternative Global index in the first eight months of the year has posted returns of 1.34%.For funds of funds, the average loss was 0.66% in August, after returns of 1.11% in July, which follows losses of 1.85% in June and gains of 0.65% in May, and 0.22% in April. UCITS funds of hedge funds show returns of 1.68% in January-August.In August, ten out of 13 strategies show losses, with losses of 1.42% for CTAs, while the only segment in positive territory is commodities (+0.63%).In the first eight months of the year, six strategies show losses, including volatility (-2.83%) and currencies (-2.26%). The best returns were for long/short equity, at 5.27%.As of the end of August, UCITS hedge funds had a total of EUR172bn, compared with EUR162bn as of the end of June.

According to the Spanish Inverco association of asset management firms, assets under management by securities funds in Spain totalled EUR139.176bn as of 31 August, which represents an increase of 1.2% compared with the end of July. That allows assets to return to their levels of November 2010, due to an increase of nearly EUR17bn, or 13.8%, in the first eight months of this year.

Mohieddine Kronfol and his team in Dubai have been made responsible by Franklin Templeton Investments for managing the new Franklin GCC Bond Fund, a sub-fund of the Luxembourg Sicav, which will invest primarily in government bonds, government agencies and businesses in the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Funds Europe reports.The portfolio may include bonds from Middle Eastern and North African issuers, as well as securities issued by supra-national bodies such as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD).