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29/11/2011

OppenheimerFunds recruits a director of fixed income products

OppenheimerFunds has announced the recruitment of Kamal Bhatia, who becomes vice president, and joins the fixed income and alternative investments team as director of products. Bhatia worked previously for TIAA-CREF, where he was managing director in charge of real asset and socially responsible products.
29/11/2011

Hedge funds predict decline in growth

Hedge fund managers expect global growth to slow next year, in a context of probable sovereign defaults in the euro zone and a slowdown in China, the Financial Times reports, citing a survey of hedge fund managers with USD800bn in assets under management. Many of them predict that the European Central Bank will have to ease its monetary policy, and slightly under 80% predict that the Federal Reserve will need to do the same.
29/11/2011

State Street group extends offerings in France

The US-based State Street group, which has been present in France for 20 years, is continuing to add to the range of products and services offered by its two local entities, State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) and State Street Bank.At SSgA, which has recently recruited two sales staff for ETFs (Olivier Paquier and Erich Geoffroy, see Newsmanagers of 8 November), Marco Fusco, CEO for France and Italy, has confirmed that the asset management firm is planning to add to its range of products on sale in France (see Newsmanagers of 16 May) with the launch of new investment strategies, including alternative management, relying on the expertise of its specialised affiliate SAARIS, and in active fundamental management, based on the expertise of the management teams recently integrated following the acquisition of Bank of Ireland Asset Management (BIAM).State Street Bank, which is headed in Paris by Raphaël Remond, calls itself a “pioneer in outsourcing of middle office services,” and is preparing to extend its custom reporting offerings to meet the needs of a vision of portfolios brought on by transparency requirements imposed by the Solvency II directive, and its range of post-market over-the-counter (OTC) currency and derivatives trading.
29/11/2011

Amundi targets EUR50bn in SRI assets

“We are hoping to soon top EUR50bn in SRI assets,” Pierre Schereck, director of employee savings and socially responsible investment at Amundi, said at a meeting organised by Novethic. The asset management firm of the Crédit Agricole group has recently topped EUR20bn in SRI assets, he says. This increase in assets will be a consequence of a transformation of mandates. “We are putting a lot of energy into motivating clients to apply SRI in their management,” Schereck explains. “That takes time, but we are on the way.” Beyond that, the director of employee savings and SRI says that Amundi is hoping to extend ESG criteria to all of its asset management.
29/11/2011

Neuberger preparing its first actively-managed ETF

One year after being granted a license by the SEC for its new actively-managed ETF activity (see Newsmanagers of 23 11 2010), Neuberger Berman is preparing the first product in its new range. According to Mutual Fund Wire, the New York-based asset management firm has submitted an application for a license for an ETF to be entitled Neuberger Berman Real Return Active ETF. It would invest in the US and international markets, in equities and bonds. Neuberger Berman has not stated what management fees the ETF will charge, Mutual Fund Wire reports.
29/11/2011

Cosmo AM hopes to develop on Korean retail market

The asset management firm Cosmo Asset Management, based in Seoul, is preparing to launch a mutual fund aimed at retail clients, Asian Investor reports. CosmoAM is also working on products for its Japanese parent company, Sparx, aimed at institutional clients. Cosmo is planning to offer a long-only equity strategy dedicated to the Korean market, which may be launched in January or February 2012. The alternative asset management firm Sparx, which controls 70% of Cosmo, manages about USD6.8bn in assets. Cosmo AM, for its part, manages slightly over USD3bn.
29/11/2011

Allfunds Bank recruits a head of international accounts

Laura González, head of development for private banking in Germany, Benelux, the Iberian peninsula, France and Africa at Thomson Reuters, has been appointed as head of international accounts at Allfunds Bank, Funds People reports. She will report to Gianluca Renzini, global head of sales.Currently, Allfunds Bank has EUR55bn in assets intermediated for 320 institutional clients in 25 countries.
29/11/2011

Number of fund mergers up in Europe

The net number of funds available for sale in Europe decreased by 390 funds between January and September 2011, a consequence of a significant increase in the number of merged funds rather than a fall in newly launched funds, explains Dunny P Moonesawmy, head of Europe and Middle East research at Lipper, which has published the statistics. 1,260 funds were merged in the period, compared with 1,142 in the year 2010 overall, and 1,662 in 2009. The mergers were primarily of equity funds (423). Meanwhile, 1523 funds were closed between January and September, while 2,383 funds were launched. As of the end of September, the number of funds on sale in Europe totalled 35,017. A trend for fund mergers is expected to continue, says Lipper, as the process of rationalising product ranges at asset management firms continues and with the UCITS 4 directive. Lipper also notes that Luxembourg continues to dominate the fund industry in Europe, with 9,183 funds out of 35,017 domiciled in the grand duchy as of the end of September, followed by France, with 5,425 products.
29/11/2011

Myriad AM releases a multi-strategy fund

The Hong Kong-based asset management firm Myriad Asset Management, created by a former Highbridge manager, Carl Huttenlocher, is to launch a multi-strategy fund in December, Asian Investor reports. The fund, Myriad Oppiortunities Master Fund, whose launch has been delayed by valuation problems, will start with about USD300m in funds. The multi-strategy approach from Myriad has an Asian bias, and includes long/short equity, convertible, capital structure arbitrage, event driven, and credit strategies. The capacity of the new fund is USD2bn. If this level is reached by the end of second quarter 2012, the fund will be closed.
29/11/2011

InverCaixa launches a variable return guaranteed fund

On 25 November, the CNMV registered the Foncaixa Garantia Eurobolsa fund, whose depository is CaixaBank. The product is a variable return fund which guarantees 104% of the initial net asset value (as of 17 February 2012), or alternatively the initial net asset value plus a 60% participation in the revaluation of the EuroStoxx 50 (PriceEuro) index between February 2012 and January 2016, at maturity (1 February 2016).The portfolio will be invested in cash, Spanish government debt repos, and money market funds, with an average maturity of less than 3 months and a minimal rating of A.CharacteristicsName: Foncaixa Garantia Eurobolsa 6 FIISIN code: ES0137665008Front-end fee: 4%Management commission: 1.77%Early withdrawal penalty: 4%
29/11/2011

Swiss Investment Managers launches a directors dealings fund

The Zurich-based firm Swiss Investment Managers GmbH (SIM) in September launched a long/short fund entitled Directors Dealing Fund, which aims to outperform the equity markets through an analysis of legal insider trading, directors’ delaings, which is declared to the authorities. This approach identifies financial institutions which are the most exposed to heavy losses due to their exposure to the European debt crisis, AR Absolute Return + Alpha reports.The president and CEO of SIM and manager of the fund, Athanasios Ladopoulos, says that the portfolio is currently net short on European banks.The objective for SIM is to raise about EUR50m for the fund in one year, and EUR200m in two years.
29/11/2011

BNY Mellon replaces Newton IM with Boston Company AM

Following the departure of its chief investment officer for North American equities, Simon Laing, who has joined the teams at Invesco (see Newsmanagers of 25 November 2011), Newton Investment Management has decided no longer to provide investment advising to the Newton American Fund, which is available to British investors from BNY Mellon Fund Managers. Newton is not planning to replace Laing immediately. BNY Mellon will now entrust investment advising for the fund to one of its boutiques, Boston Company Asset Management. The product will be renamed as The BNY Mellon American Fund. All of these changes will take place in early 2012.
29/11/2011

Vinculum to launch its first fund in January

Nigel Legge, former CEO of Liontrust, who left that firm with a GBP665,000 severance pay (see Newsmanagers of 10 May and 25 November), will launch the IM Vinculum Global Equity Fund, the first sub-fund of an OEIC fund from Vinculum Fund Management LLP, its new FSA-regulated asset management firm, in January 2012, several British media sources are reporting.The portfolio will include 50 positions on equities worldwide, and will aim to outperform the MSCI World TR. Management commission will be limited to 0.25%, and Vinculum will charge a 20% commission on quarterly outperformance. Minimal subscription is set at GBP1,000.Vinculum was launched by four partners: in addition to Legge, these include Bjarne Jensen, CEO of StockRate Asset Management, Niels Jensen, managing partner at Absolute Return Partners, and Douglas Thursby-Pelham, a marketing and communications specialist.
29/11/2011

Aberdeen recruits CIO for bonds from Close AM

Mark Parry, managing director and head of fixed income at Close Asset Management after serving as head of inflation bonds at Schroders, is joining Aberdeen Asset Management as senior investment manager in the multi-asset class team (9 people, GBP6bn in assets). He will report to Mike Turner, head of global strategy and asset allocation.
29/11/2011

Zafferano recruits more staff from Tudor

Cliff Pattenden has left Tudor Investment Corporation, a USD11bn hedge fund, to join former colleagues at Zafferano Capital, Financial News reports. He will be COO and chief financial officer at Zafferano.
29/11/2011

Financial risks worry institutional investors

The perception of financial risks by institutional investors in Europe has risen sharply. But the rankings of these risks has changed considerably in the past six months. The RiskMonitor survey from Allianz Global Investors, published yesterday, shows that European institutional investors now consider volatility the major risk they will need to confront in the next 12 months, followed by sovereign debt and falling equity markets. In the last survey, interest rates were the most cited concern, while volatility was only in fourth place. In numbers, the percentage of investors surveyed who consider volatility a major risk rose from 16% to 89%. However, sovereign debt is now perceived as a major risk by more than one third of the investors surveyed, a higher percentage than all other risk categories, the study finds. Thomas Wiesemann, chief market officer at Allianz Global Investors in Europe, says a prolonged aversion to risk could prove costly for investors. “The current low interest rates,” he explains, “will not let them manage sufficient returns to meet their payment liabilities, and may even result in real negative returns,”The full results of the survey may be consulted at the following address: http://www.allianzglobalinvestors.de/docs-produkte/global/RiskMonitor-N…
29/11/2011

German Lehman victims may sue S&P

A German federal court in Frankfurt (Oberlandesgericht, or OLG) has found that victims of the Lehman bankruptcy have the right to file lawsuits in Germany against S&P, seeking damages and interest, as the ratings agency has a legally independent affiliate in the country with its own assets, Handelsblatt reports.With this verdict, the OLG has authorised the district court (Landgericht) to rule that a lawsuit filed by an investor who lost about EUR30,000 in September 2008, which were invested in Lehman certificates four months earlier, due to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, may be heard. The plaintiff claims that he made the investment decision based on S&P ratings.Lawyers are now expecting a wave of lawsuits against S&P in Germany. S&P had no comment.
29/11/2011

Fitch évalue la croissance de l’exposition aux CDS souverains

L’agence estime dans un rapport que l’exposition aux CDS souverains a progressé de 1.500 milliards de dollars depuis fin 2008, avec l’Europe représentant environ les deux tiers de la hausse totale. Alors que le notionnel brut a fortement augmenté au cours des dernières années pour certains pays, l’exposition finale nette apparaît faible, à moins de 2% de la dette totale.
29/11/2011

KKR convient du rachat de Capital Safety Group

Le groupe de private equity a fait part d’un accord pour le rachat pour 1,12 milliard de dollars du fabricant britannique d’équipement de sécurité Capital Safety Group. Le vendeur est Arle Capital Partners, issu de Candover Partners à la faveur d’un MBO.
29/11/2011

Carl Icahn fait une offre pour Commercial Metals

Le financier américain entend racheter le recycleur de ferraille d’acier pour 1,73 milliard de dollars. Icahn Enterprises, qui détient déjà 10% du capital de la cible, offre 15 dollars par action sans aucune condition de financement ou de due diligence. L’acquéreur souhaite combiner la société avec ses propres activités de recyclage et nommer une nouvelle direction.
29/11/2011

Nomura se défie de l’Europe périphérique

La banque japonaise a indiqué avoir réduit de 83% sa détention d’actifs liés à l’Italie entre fin septembre et le 24 novembre, à 467 millions de dollars. Celle liée à l’Espagne a été réduite de 62% à 175 millions et celle liée à la Grèce de 43% à 27 millions.
29/11/2011

Le président de JPMorgan Cazenove tire sa révérence

Selon une note interne consultée par Reuters, le président de la filiale londonienne de courtage de JPMorgan, David Mayhew, va à 71 ans se retirer de la gestion au quotidien de la société pour assurer un rôle de conseil aux clients en tant que vice-président de la banque d’investissement de la banque américaine au niveau mondial. Il sera remplacé par son second, Tim Wise.
29/11/2011

L’AMF consulte sur les directives Prospectus et Transparence

Le régulateur met en consultation jusqu’au 28 décembre la transposition de la directive révisant les directives Prospectus et Transparence, modifiant notamment le champ d’application de Prospectus. L’AMF souhaite transposer dès à présent dans son règlement général les dispositions qui ne nécessitant pas de modification législative ou réglementaire.
29/11/2011

Bruxelles amende son texte sur l'audit

Le commissaire européen au Marché intérieur Michel Barnier, qui dévoilera sa proposition demain, rend l’audit conjoint optionnel mais insiste sur la rotation des cabinets.
29/11/2011

Les banques mettent au régime leurs créanciers

Pour se recapitaliser, Santander, BNP Paribas et Société Générale ont lancé des offres d'échange ou de rachat de dettes hybrides, très décotées. Les termes sont donc peu attractifs mais ces offres constituent pour les investisseurs une porte de sortie dans un marché peu liquide.

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