Old Mutual Wealth Management, the holding company of Skandia and Old Mutual Global Invetors, has announced the appointment of three independent, non-executive directors, Ashok Gupta, Jane Hanson and Simon Davies.Gupta holds other non-executive responsibilities at New Ireland Assurance, AA Insurance Services, JP Morgan JP Morgan European Smaller Companies Investment Trust and eValue FE. Gupta will chair the auditing board at Old Mutual Wealth. Hanson holds other non-executive responsibilities, including one at Direct Line Insurance Group, where she is chair of the risk board. At Old Mutual Wealth, she will also be chair of the risk committee. Davies is also chairman of the JP Morgan Overseas Investment Trust and non-executive director at Grainger PLC. Davies, who was also chairman and CEO of Threadneedle, will chair the remuneration committee at Old Mutual Wealth.
Citigroup has sold assets from private equity and hedge funds in the past few months for USD6bn, in order to comply with new laws that limit the stakes that banks may hold in alternative investments, the Wall Street Journal reports. Last week, the US group sold a USD4.3bn private equity fund, Citi Venture Capital International, to Rohatyn Group, a private equity fund. On 9 August, it sold an emerging market hedge fund with USD1.9bn to the managers of the fund. Ciigroup had once been a major player in alternative investment. In February 2012, the group had USD18.6bn in assets under management in hedge funds and private equity at its affilate Citi Capital Advisors. But after the recent operations, the structure has only one fund left, the Metalmark Capital fund, with USD2.5bn in assets, which the bank is seeking to sell.
Azimut, via its Luxembourg sub-holding company AZ International Holding, has subscribed to a capital increase related to the acquisition of a 51% stake in the capital of An Ping Investment, the holding company which controls all capital in Sinopro Financial Planning Taiwan Limited, Bluerating reports. Sinopro is a Securities Investment Consulting Enterprise which is present in the distribution of asset management products in Taiwan. The total cost of the operation is EUR3bn. The objective for the agreement is to create a joint venture for the distribution of asset management products in Taiwan.
The Swedish asset management firm Carnegie is closing the Carnegie Sverige Select fund, an unconstrained Swedish equity fund, to new investors. “In order to preserve our freedom, we must close the fund before it becomes too large,” explains Simon Blecher, manager of the fund. The fund, launched on 28 September 2007, now has SEK1.6bnin assets, or EUR180m. Carnegie Sverige Select, highly concentrated, has about 15 positions in its portfolio, and one single share can represent about 30% of the fund.
The Banque J. Safra Sarasin on 3 September announced the recruitment of four experienced specialists as additions to its team of wealth managers. Florian Esterer (who joins from MainFirst, after several years at Swisscanto) is the new head of the wealth management team in the area of equities, and is joined by Thomas Zbinden, senior wealth manager (who also joins from Swisscanto), as well as Christoph Lang, wealth manager, who joins from the Cantonal Bank of Zurich. The German Helmut Kotschwar, head of investment strategy and portfolio analysis at SAM Sustainable Asset Management since 2008, has also been recruited to serve in the newly-created position of head of the investment centre. He will be responsible for developing portfolios for all asset management units.
The Swiss wealth management firm Aquila has lost its chief investment officer, Jürg Furrer, who had also been a member of the executive board at the group, the specialist information website finews reports.After nine years at Aquila, Furrer will on 1 October join the Swiss office of the US group Pimco. The head of Pimco Switzerland, Christian M. Staub, had recently announced that he wished to strengthen his team with the recruitment of professionals with a lot of knowledge of the Swiss market.
By the end of September, Jörn Stobbe, a partner at the law firm Clifford Chance, and until the end of August chairman of the German arm of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, will join RREEF Management GmbH, a real estate fund management affiliate of Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management (DeAWM), as a member of general management. He will have the position of managing director, and will be responsible for asset management activities and trading for the German-speaking countries (Germany, Switzerland, Austria). Stobbe is also a member of the board at the Corporate Governance Initiative (ICG) by the German real estate sector.Pierre Cherki, global head of alternatives & real assets at DeAWM, states that Stubbe will report to Georg Allendorf. He highlights the expertise of the new arrival in the area of “opportunity-driven investment.”
Deutsche Bank on 2 September announced that it had completed a transaction by which, in May, it acquired the 51% stake held by its partner, Xchanging plc, in their joint venture, Xchanging Transaction Banking (XTB).As the necessary permission had been obtained from the supervisory authorities and the shareholders in Xchanging the change of ownership took place on 1 September, and XTB will now be known as DB Investment Services GmbH.Holger Wegmann becomes CEO of DB Investment Services, while Catrin Röthe, a member of the executive team at XTB, will serve as chief production officer. The position of COO will go to Thomas Beemelmann.
With effect from 1 September 2013, Gunther Will has become director of distribution of open-ended funds from Berenberg to wealth managers, funds of funds and IFAs.Will, who for some months was chairman of the board at the brokerage pool Argentos Verwaltungs-AG, served until spring 2012 as head of retail sales at Alceda Fund Management SA, and head of fund distribution for the Aquila Capital group.Will will report to Uwe Schedewsky, head of client management at the asset management business unit of Berenberg. Assets under management by the oldest private bank in Germany total about EUR28bn.
Currently, institutional assets at Deka, the central asset management firm for the German savings banks, represent EUR85bn, out of a total of EUR177bn. This includes open-ended funds dedicated to institutionals (EUR10bn), institutional funds (Spezialfonds) for EUR62bn, ETFs (EUR4.6bn), and advised assets (EUR8.5bn). The unit will now be placed under the heading “Deka Institutionell” and will allow the firm to offer clients a complete value chain, from strategic analysis to reporting and controlling, without forgetting the selection of appropriate products solutions, and their deployment, says Klaus-Dieter Böhme, director of institutional distribution.Of this total of EUR85bn in institutional assets, about 60% come from businesses and institutions which belong to the galaxy of the savings banks. Deka predicts that net inflows to the institutional unit will total EUR6bn this year.
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) released on September 2 the final framework for margin requirements for non-centrally cleared derivatives.Under the globally agreed standards published yesterday, all financial firms and systemically important non-financial entities that engage in non-centrally cleared derivatives will have to exchange initial and variation margin commensurate with the counterparty risks arising from such transactions.The final requirements have been developed taking into account feedback from two rounds of consultation (a July 2012 consultative paper and a February 2013 near-final proposal) as well as a quantitative impact study that helped inform the policy deliberations.The requirement to collect and post initial margin on non-centrally cleared trades will be phased in over a four-year period, beginning in December 2015 with the largest, most active and most systemically important derivatives market participants.
One of the Singapore sovereign wealth funds, Temasek, announced before the weekend that it had selected locations for its offices in London and New York, with the objective of being operational before the end of the year, according to a statement.The New York office will be located at 375 Park Avenue, in the business district of Manhattan. The London office will be at 23 King Street, in St James’s, near a highly valued hedge fund area.The offices come in addtion to the SWF’s network of foreign locations, with nine offices in Asia and two in Latin America.
JP Morgan has decided to limit access to an Asian equity fund managed by Pauline Ng, Citywire reports. The fund, the JP Morgan ASEAN Equity, had been subject to access constraints since June. As of the end of July 2013, its assets under management peaked at USD1.2bn, and had then fallen back to USD1.04bn. The fund has earned returns of 49.51% for the three years to the end of July 2013, compared with gains of 36% for the Citywire benchmark index, the MSCI South East Asia TR USD, over the same period.
Baring Asset Management has hired Laura Luo as head of Hong Kong China equities, starting on 12th September. She replaces Agnes Deng who has left the firm and will report to Wilfred Sit, chief investment officer, Asia. Laura Luo joins from Schroder Investment Management where she worked for over 12 years. Since 2002 she has been lead manager on several Hong Kong China equity funds, responsible for assets under management of over USD2bn. This includes the Schroder International Selection Fund: China Opportunities, which she has managed since it launched in 2006.Based in Hong Kong, Laura Luo will be responsible for managing the Hong Kong China equities team as well as being lead manager on the Baring Hong Kong China Fund and segregated portfolios.Winston Ke, who has materially contributed to the portfolio management of the China A-share product since its inception, will become lead manager on the Baring China A-Share Fund and all China A-Share segregated portfolios, effective immediately. He will report to Laura Luo.Winston Ke joined Baring Asset Management in April 2010 from First State Cinda Asset Management in Shenzhen, China, where he covered China A-Share markets.
BNY Mellon Asset Management on 2 September announced the appoinment of Justine Mizrahi, 38, as its new head of the institutional distribution department for French- and Italian-speaking Switzerland, based in Geneva, and Nicolas Kopitsis, 36, s its new head of wholesale distribution for Switzerland and Austria. Mizrahi is the new head of distribution for products from all investment departments of BNY Mellon Asset Management aimed at financial intermediaries and institutional investors in French-speaking Switzerland. She joined the Cash Investment Strategies (CIS) department at BNY Mellon in 2010 as a bond portfolio specialist. Mizrahi, previously at BlackRock, had been head of sales for cash and short-term bond products for France, Italy and Spain. She also worked at Schroders and Axa Private. In his role as head of the intermediated distribution channel, Kopitsis is a newcomer at BNY Mellon. In his previous role, he served as head of wholesale distribution in Switzerland and Liechtenstein at Lombard Odier Asset Management. He had previously worked at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, as head of the Swiss market for institutional investors and as a portfolio manager at Credit Suisse.
Michael O. Bentlage, managing partner responsible for the asset servicing unit, has announced that the Frankfurt-based private bank Hauck & Aufhäuser Privatbankiers (H&A) will be taking over the depository banking activities previously provided by SEB for seven Ampega funds. H&A will also be taking over six Ampega funds launched in May and July this year.Bentlage announced at this time that H&A is planning to develop a depository banking activity and has already entered talks on the subject with several firms.
Ashmore Investment Management, one of the specialist managers of emerging market debt and equity securities, on September 2 announced the launch of the Ashmore SICAV Turkish Equity Fund.The fund is an open-ended vehicle primarily investing predominantly in Turkish equity and equity related instruments issued by corporates and quasi-sovereigns. Ashmore’s globally managed funds have been major investors in Turkish equities since 1987. The asset manager further strengthened its Turkish connections when it launched Ashmore Portföy, Turkey in 2008, one of Ashmore’s first domestic asset management ventures.The SICAV Turkish Equity Fund is an open-ended daily dealing UCITS IV Luxembourg registered fund. The fund will be registered for sale in Austria, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland and the UK and is available in share class denominations in US Dollars, Euros, UK Sterling and other currencies.Ashmore has assets under management of USD77.4billion as of 30 June 2013.
From 2 September, the DWS Japan Opportunities fund (DE0008490954) has become known as the Deutsche Nomura Japan Growth. The change is a sign of the deepened coopertion between Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management (DeAWM) and Nomua Asset Management.The fund actually will now be managed by the team at Nomura Asset Management led by Shinsuke Yauchi and Ken Nagano. This will allow the fund to benefit from the local expertise of Nomura AM, one of the largest strategic partners of the German group. Asoka Wöhrmann, co-CIO, says that there is not yet any product of this type in Europe.The team at Nomura Asset Management benefits from the work of more than 20 buy-side analysts, and the fund will be managed with a growth method, with a portfolio of 40 to 60 positions out of a universe of 450 securities.
On 2 September, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), the organisation responsible for developing UK corporate governance and stewardship codes and accounting, auditing and actuarial work standards, appointed Marian Williams as codes & standards director, in which position she will assist Melanie McLaren, executive director, codes & standards, and Angus Bogle, director of investor engagement, as deputy to Mridul Hegde, executive director, strategy.Williams had previously been director of the insurance financial services unit at PwC. Bogle, who had been co-head of equity at Fildelity Worldwide Investments from November 2007 to December 2011, will be responsible for creating an enhanced engagement programme for the FRC and “the investor community.” He will also work with the codes & standards team to ensure that governance and reporting meet the expectations of investors.
The Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has fined Everbright Securities RMB523m, or USD85.5m, for insider trading on 16 August (Newsmanagers of 30 August). The CSRC has also temporarily barred the firm from proprietary trading services, except for bond transactions. Four heads at the firm, including former chairman Xu Haoming and head of investmetn Yang Jianbp have also been fined a combined total of RMB2.4m, and are now barred from practising in the financial sector.
The Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) has announced that in August it issued QFII quotas totalling USD1.5bn to twelve firms. This brings the total authorisations to a record USD46.443bn.Z-Ben Advisors points out that it should be remembered that the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has obtained an additional quota of USD500m as part of this process, bringing the total under this quota to USD1.5bn. The HKMA becomes the first operator to pass the USD1bn mark, and it is likely that SAFE will now focus on developing its QFII programme for asset owners, such as pension funds, sovereign funds, monetary authorities and charities rather than asset managers.Among the recipients of quotas issued in August, three are new: Hall Capital Partners LLC, University of Notre Dame du Lac and Greenwoods Asset Management Hong Kong Limited.
JP Morgan a décidé de limiter l’accès à un fonds d’actions asiatiques piloté par Pauline Ng, rapporte Citywire.Ce fonds, le JP Morgan ASEAN Equity, avait été soumis à des contraintes d’accès dès le mois de juin. Fin juillet 2013, ses actifs sous gestion avaient culminé à 1,2 milliard de dollars pour ensuite retomber à 1,04 milliard de dollars.Le fonds affiche une performance de 49,51% sur les trois ans à fin juillet 2013, à comparer à un gain de 36% pour l’indice de référence de Citywire, le MSCI South East Asia TR USD, sur la même période.
La Fédération bancaire française (FBF) a annoncé la nomination le 1er septembre de Jean-Laurent Bonnafé à la fonction de président. Le directeur général de BNP Paribas depuis le 1er décembre 2011succède à Jean-Paul Chifflet, directeur général de Crédit Agricole SA.Cette nomination, pour une durée d’un an, conformément aux statuts de l’association professionnelle, avait été annoncé début juillet par la FBF. Dans le même temps, précisait alors la fédération, François Pérol, président du directoire du groupe BPCE, devient vice-président de la FBF et Michel Lucas, président de la Confédération nationale du Crédit Mutuel reste trésorier de la FBF.
Amaïka Asset Management a annoncé le recrutement de Michel Menigoz au sein de l’équipe de gestion fondée par David Kalfon et Christophe Berger. L’ancien de Société Générale AM apportera son expertise en stratégie d’investissement actions internationales, sélection de fonds et contrôle de risque. Michel Menigoz a débuté sa carrière en 1991 dans le groupe Société Générale où il a successivement occupé des fonctions d’actuaire, d’analyste quantitatif et de stratégiste. Ensuite, à partir de 1996, il s’est investi dans la gestion des portefeuilles d’actions internationales, d’abord en prenant en charge les OPCVM grand public du groupe Société Générale, puis en développant une stratégie Global Equity à destination d’une clientèle institutionnelle internationale.
Le cours indicatif de la roupie indonésienne a franchi mardi le cap des 11.000 pour un dollar pour la première fois depuis plus de quatre ans, au lendemain de l’annonce d’un déficit commercial record dans la principale économie du Sud-Est asiatique. Le bureau national des statistiques a annoncé lundi un déficit commercial de 2,31 milliards de dollars pour le mois de juillet, après 880 millions le mois précédent.
Le gendarme britannique du secteur financier, la FCA (Financial Conduct Authority), a infligé une amende de 7,2 millions de livres à Aberdeen AM et Aberdeen Fund Management. Elle reproche au gérant de n’avoir pas correctement protégé les avoirs de clients déposés dans des fonds monétaires auprès de tierces parties bancaires entre septembre 2008 et août 2011.
Federal Finance Gestion lance le FCPI Pluriel Valeurs n°3 (qui soutient la croissance d’entreprises françaises innovantes) et le FIP Pluriel Ouest n°5 (qui soutient les PME régionales de Bretagne, Pays de la Loire, Centre et Ile de France). Ces deux nouveaux fonds rejoignent la gamme « Pluriel », créée en 2008 et permettent de conjuguer investissement dans des sociétés de croissance et réductions d’impôt sur le revenu. Les FCPI et FIP de Federal Finance Gestion bénéficient d’une stratégie de multigestion chère à la philosophie de diversification la société. Ainsi, chaque fonds est géré par trois équipes de gestion complémentaires : La gestion des poches sous quota est déléguée à des sociétés de gestion partenaires, Amiral Gestion et Inocap pour le FCPI et OTC Extend et UI Gestion pour le FIP, rigoureusement sélectionnées pour leurs performances et leurs expertises spécifiques dans le domaine du capital investissement (connaissance des PME innovantes et régionales en particulier). Cette stratégie permet aussi d’augmenter pour chaque fonds le nombre de sociétés investies (en moyenne 20 à 30 lignes) ce qui en améliore la diversification. Les poches hors quota sont gérées directement par Federal Finance Gestion dont le savoir-faire permet d’analyser et d’investir un très large ensemble de classes d’actifs (monétaire, actions européennes et internationales y compris émergents, obligations souveraines et corporate, immobilier coté, matières premières dont or, énergie et agriculture, devises,...). Cette stratégie a prouvé dans les précédents FCPI et FIP qu’elle peut apporter un moteur de performance supplémentaire à chaque fonds.
La valeur des certificats et des produits à levier traités sur les marchés boursiers a progressé de 8,7% entre le premier et le deuxième trimestre pour atteindre 27,1 milliards d’euros, selon les statistiques de l’association européenne du secteur, l’Eusipa, qui couvre six pays dont la France. Les certificats représentent 48% des volumes et les produits à levier 52%.
Chypre met en œuvre avec succès les réformes prévues par le plan d’aide de 10 milliards d’euros que lui ont accordé les autorités européennes et le FMI; et Nicosie recevra comme prévu la prochaine tranche de cette aide, montre lundi un projet de rapport de la Commission européenne. Le document doit encore être approuvé par les ministres des Finances de l’Union.
La croissance a accéléré en août dans le secteur manufacturier de la zone euro pour atteindre son meilleur niveau depuis juin 2011, selon les résultats définitifs de l’enquête Markit. L’indice PMI des directeurs d’achat du secteur manufacturier a progressé à 51,4 contre 50,3 en juillet.