p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Retail investors are earning “succulent yields” thanks to the ongoing pitched battle between financial institutions to get their hands on liquidity, Cinco Días reports. According to statistics from the Bank of Spain, the interest being offered by banks and savings banks for savings accounts has risen by 20.8% since the end of 2009. Banks are offering an average of 3.14% on one and two-year products.Since then, managers of about 3,200 Sicav funds registered with the CNMV did not pass up the opportunity to allocate EUR3.59bn to bank savings accounts as of the end of September. That represents 13.7% of their assets, whereas the percentage was only 6.6% as of the end of third quarter 2009. This increase has come largely to the detriment of listed bonds and investment funds, particularly money markets.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The fund management firm from Julius Baer, Swiss & Global Asset management, has sold the 31% stake it had held for seven years in the Spanish independent private bank Atlas Capital. Expansión reports that the transaction will take place at book value, while the stake was purchased for EUR3m. As of the end of 2010, Atlas Capital had assets of EUR660m, managed on behalf of 2,400 clients. Net profits totalled EUR1.14m. Following the exit of Julius Baer, the group’s capital is controlled by its 14 managing partners, with the largest shareholder being deputy director Jorge Sanz.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Global Wealth and Investment Management unit of Bank of America has earned net profits of USD1.34bn for the 2010 fiscal year, compared with USD1.71bn the previous year. In fourth quarter alone, net profits fell by nearly USD200m compared with the previous year, to USD332m. As of 31 December 2010, assets under management totalled USD643.9bn, compared with USD749.8bn one year earlier. The decline in assets under management is due to the sale of Columbia to Ameriprise in autumn 2009.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } As of the end of December, Barings had assets in France of about EUR1.2bn, or about EUR400m more than one year previously; once again, assets at the French arm of the British management firm increased by nearly 50% (see Newsmanagers of 8 December 2009). Half of this increase, or EUR200m, is due to positive market effects, while the remaining 50% come from net subscriptions, while gross subscriptions totalled EUR600m, Benoît du Mesnil du Buisson, president of Baring France SAS, tells Newsmanagers. A net total of about EUR120m has been collected for the Global Emerging Markets fund (USD2.18bn as of the end of December); sales to European specialist multi-managers have been good for the German Growth fund (GBP277.4m).

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } HP has decided to extend and expand the management mandate for its corporate savings plans to Fidelity Investments, which has been in place since 1991.From 1 January 2011, the management firm will also take charge of 162,500 members of the EDS (Electronic Data Systems) program, who were previously mandated to other management firms. Fidelity will thus become the single manager for HP retirement plans, including 135,000 defined-contribution and 192,000 defined-benefit clients. As of 30 November, assets un defined contribution plans totalled USD14.2bn.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Citi Private Bank will soon launch its family office in Hong Kong, to serve the north Asian region. The new activity will be directed by Richard Straus, Asian Investor reports. According to a spokesperson for the bank, plans to serve south-east Asia are also in preparation, and recruitments are underway. Earlier in the week, Citi Private Bank announced the appointment of James Holder as director for its family office for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Some of the world’s biggest investors have turned increasingly negative on government bonds from developed countries as they warn of the growing danger of inflation, according to the Financial Times. “Why would you want to be a bondholder with bond yields so low and that sort of inflationary trend,” Bill Gross, who runs the world’s largest bond fund at Pimco, asked the Financial Times. Jim Rogers, the investor based in Singapore, said western governments were concealing the extent of inflation, leading him to avoid bonds and continue his preference for commodities.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The French firm DNCA Finance (Banca Leonardo group) has brought all of its funds on sale in Europe together under its own brand name with immediate effect. Products on sale in Germany will drop the Leonardo Invest name, and the Luxembourg Sicav will change names to become known as DNCA Invest. Five DNCA Finance funds managed in Paris (Europe, Evolutif, Centifolia Europe, Infrastructures, and Convertibles) have been available in Germany since September 2010, says Jan Schünemann, director of sales for Germany.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } According to sources close to the case, the RREEF Infrasctructure fund from Deutsche Bank has acquired a 49% stake in thee Spanish firms which have five wind farms in the Castille-Leon province, for an undisclosed amount, Cotizalia reports.The vendor is the real estate promoter Rafael González Vallinas, head of Inversiones Empresariales Vapat, who is selling up to 200 megawatts of the installated power to the German fund.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Bankinter has announced the launch of the Fondo Bankinter Eurostoxx Inverso, an equities product which, as its name indicates, seeks to inversely replicate the evolution of the Euro Stoxx 50 index. The minimal recommended investment duration is 1 year.The passive management fund, which was registered on 16 December and founded on 9 October 2008, will invest in futures, and will be authorised to invest up to 10% of its assets in other funds.CharacteristicsName: Bankinter Eurostoxx InversoISIN code: ES0164585004Management commission: 1%Minimal subscription: 60

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The life insurer Württembergische Lebensversicherung has sold four of the seven buildings of the Friedrich Carré complex in Berlin, totalling 23,500 square metres, including 18,000 square metres of office space and 3,400 of retail space, to Deka Immobilien. The property will be added to the portfolio of the open-ended real estate fund Deka-ImmobilienGlobal. It is the second German property to be acquired by Deka in 2010, following the Krankenhaus Süd hospital in Cologne.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Austrian-German management firm C-Quadrat on 1 April will close the C-Quadrat Arts Total Return Global-AMI fund (EUR700m) and the C-Quadrat Arts Total Return Dynamic to new retail and institutional investments, as well as to new investments from unit-linked savings plans. However, payments from existing savings plans will continue to be accepted, along with investments from life insurance policies of existing or future clients. The two funds will be replaced by the German-registered flexible fund C-Quadrat Arts Total Return Flexible (DE000A0YJMN7), which was launched in November 2010, and whose “highly active” allocation to equities and more exactly to equities funds may vary from 0% to 100%, depending on market conditions. The new fund, managed by Arts Asset Management, currently has assets of EUR9.63m.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Van Eck Global has announced that the board of trustees at the Market Vectors ETF Trust has approved a 1-for-3 split share split in the Market Vectors Indonesia Index ETF (acronym: IDX). Shares were trading at USD75.54 on Friday, 21 January.The split will take place at the close of trading on 28 January 2011, and shares resulting from the operation will begin to be traded on 1 February.The split will allow for a lower unit price for shares, making the fund more accessible to investors. Van Eck global estimates that the move will increase liquidity, and by extension, tighten bid-ask spreads.Assets in the fund, focused on the most liquid Indonesian shares, on Friday totalled USD494.79m.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The ETF range from Charles Schwab has gained two new members, and now includes 13 products. The new ETFs are the Schwab U.S. REIT ETF (acronym SCHH) and the Schwab U.S. Mid-Cap ETF (SCHM), both of which charge fees of 0.13%.Like the other ETFs of the range, they may be bought and sold without a commission from Schwab online accounts.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } With the Frost Diversified Strategies Fund (actonym FDSFX), Frost Investment Advisors has launched a mutual fund which offers investors access to alternative strategies which have previously been available only to hedge fund and private equity fund clients. The objective is to preserve capital and to reduce potential losses while also offering potential outperformance. About 60% of the portfolio will be allocated to traditional investments (equities, bonds, cash and publicly-traded options). The hedge fund replication portion will total 30% to 40%, and will rely on beta and hedge fund index replication strategies, using freely available products.The fund will be managed by four people: Tom Stringfellow, president of Frost, David Telling, principal portfolio manager, Brad Thompson, director of research, and Jeffrey Elswick, fixed income director.Front-end fees will be limited to a maximum of 5.75%, and TER will total 2%.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } According to iShares data provided to Agefi, the European market in exchange-traded products (ETP) finished last year with an inflow of EUR4bn in December, compared with EUR2.6bn in November. In 2010, the sector absorbed EUR38.5bn in new inflows, which brings assets under management to a record EUR234bn, the newspaper reports.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The DB Hedge Fund index gained 2.33% in December, according to the most recent statistics from Deutsche Bank. The strategies which contributed most to the performance of the index were Equity Hedge, event-driven, Systematic Macro, Global Macro and credit and convertible indices.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Wall Street Journal reports that Phil Roblee, head of alternative investments for the School Employees Retirement System of Ohio pension fund (USD10bn) has asked the hedge funds Level Global Investors LP (USD4bn) and Diamondback Capital Management LLC (USD5bn), who are among the asset management firms involved in a wide-ranging investigation by the SEC and the FBI of possible insider trading, for an explanation. They have not learned anything so far, and Diamondback has replies that it cannot provide any information while the investigation is underway.Roblee has hot withdrawn the money invested in the fund, nor has the Public Employees Retirement System of Pennsylvania, which has also maintained its allocation to Diamondback. The fund, which will have to handle redemption requests of USD400m by mid-February, has offered its clients a discount on management commissions to 1.75% from 2%. It is also planning to charge 1% on redemptions, to pay for potential sentencing that could require disgorgements.

A Morgan Stanley banker allegedly leaked details of Advanced Micro Devices plan to buy ATI Technologies, which was ultimately passed to Galleon Group co-founder Raj Rajaratnam, prosecutors say, according to the Financial Times. A spokesman for Morgan Stanley said that the banker has been placed on leave and that the bank is fully co-operating with the government’s investigation.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Carmignac Gestion on Friday, 21 January announced the arrival of Marco Fiorini as a member of the sales team at the management firm. He will serve as director of professional clients for Switzerland, and will aim to develop the presence of Carmignac Gestion in the professional client segment. Fiorini will report to Davide Fregonese, director of professional clients for Europe, a statement says.Fiorini, 40, previously served as CEO and head of professional clients at Clariden Leu Asset Management.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The former head of European distribution at iShares, Isabell Mössler, has been recruited as co-head of European distribution at ETF Securities LLP, where she joins Scott Thompson. She will be in charge of the German-speaking markets (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), northern Europe, and the Iberian peninsula. She will report to Mark Weeks, partner at ETF Securities Marketing, and replaces Tim Harvey, who will join the New York office to develop distribution in North America.

In theory, Barings has already largely covered its areas of excellence well with appropriate products. The British asset management firm, whose funds dedicated to emerging markets represent about EUR16bn, out of a total of EUR37bn, already include heavyweight players such as the Hong Kong China fund, with EUR3.36bn, Eastern Europe (EUR2.41bn), and Global Emerging Markets (EUR1.63bn), as well as Global Resources (USD1.23bn), Marino Valensise, CIO, announced on Friday.In these conditions, the need for new products is not urgent. Barings may, however, soon fill a gap in its product range with an Asian emerging market bond fund, to take advantage of appreciation of local currencies and the fact that Asian and Middle Eastern investors, including sovereign funds, are seeking local investment opportunities, which ultimately carry less risk than US Treasuries.Asset allocation mandates and funds which have been offered by Barings hitherto have aimed at returns 400 basis points higher than the Libor or the consumer price index. The management firm will also add to its range of products of this type. The British asset management firm has not ruled out the possibility of releasing a more aggressive product, which would aim to achieve returns 600 basis points higher than the Libor.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Financial Services Compensation Scheme in the United Kingdom has asked fund management firms to compensate investors who lost money in the bankruptcy of Keydata, a provider of structured products, the Financial Times reports.Ordinarily, reimbursements in such a case would have been the responsibility of financial advisers, but the amount of money in question is so large (GBP326m) that the FSCS has had to turn to asset managers to provide part of the amount (GBP236m). The cost will be shared between management firms who sell products to retail clients.

Aberdeen Asset Management has launched the Aberdeen Global - Emerging Markets Corporate Bond Fund, Aberdeen Global - Ethical World Equity Fund and the Aberdeen Global – American Smaller Companies Fund. The three funds are part of the Group’s Luxembourg-domiciled Aberdeen Global SICAV.The Scottish asset management company has secured over USD120 million of seeding for the three funds from existing clients - USD32.5 million for the emerging market corporate bond fund, USD54.5 million for the ethical world equity fund and USD41 million for the American smaller companies fund. Once authorised for sale by local regulators the funds will be actively marketed across Europe and parts of Asia.The Aberdeen Global - Emerging Markets Corporate Bond Fund will be managed by Aberdeen’s emerging market debt team, led by Brett Diment. Currently the team has over USD600 million invested in emerging market corporate bonds out of total assets under management of over USD5 billion.The Aberdeen Global - Ethical World Equity Fund will be based on the existing UK-domiciled, Aberdeen Ethical World Fund and will be managed by the Group’s global equity team based in Edinburgh. The 14-strong team, led by Stephen Docherty, manages over USD1 billion in Environmental, Social Corporate Governance (ESG) segregated mandates and pooled funds.The team will screen companies for involvement in alcohol, tobacco, pornographic products, gambling and weaponry. If a company’s turnover in any of these areas exceeds 10% (or 5% for pornography), it will automatically be excluded from the Fund’s investment universe. Companies will be also analysed on an ESG basis. The Aberdeen Global –American Smaller Companies Fund will be managed from Philadelphia by the Group’s 12-strong North American equity team, led by Paul Atkinson. The team will employ Aberdeen’s group-wide, disciplined, bottom-up equity investment process in managing the portfolio.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Swiss asset management firm Lombard Odier Investment Managers (LOIM) has announced the launch of the UCITS-compliant bond fund 5Bs Bond Fund, an actively-managed Luxembourg-registered product which invests in corporate bonds with ratings of BBB and BB. The benchmark is a fundamental weighting index, which unlike indices which are weighted in terms of capitalisation, give no advantage in the weighting to businesses in sectors which have higher levels of debt. The fund will be managed by Kevin Corregan, head of credit at LOIM.Stéphane Monier, CIO for fixed income & currencies at LOIM, explains that “the potential of the cross-border universe covering BBB and BB has been neglected up to now. Many investors are required to sell bonds when their ratings are lowered, and these bonds then become available to investors who are not subject to this constraint.”The 5Bs fund aims to capture additional performance by focusing on “fallen angels” whose rating has been lowered to high yeild, and “rising stars,” whose ratings are likely to soon be raised to investment grade. “This is not a niche market, since the 5B universe of corporate bonds represents three times the volume of high yeild, and produces higher returns than investment grade, with equivalent volatility and a negligible amount of added risk,” says Monier.

L’assureur-vie Württembergische Lebensversicherung a vendu pour environ 105 millions d’euros quatre des sept immeubles de l’ensemble Friedrich Carré de Berlin à Deka Immobilien, ce qui représente 23.500 mètres carrés, dont 18.000 mètres carrés de bureaux et 3.400 mètres carrés de magasins. Cet actif est affecté au portefeuille du fonds immobilier offert au public Deka-ImmobilienGlobal, dont c’est le second actif allemand acheté par Deka en 2010, après l’hôpital Krankenhaus Süd de Cologne.

Le gestionnaire austro-autrichien C-Quadrat va fermer au 1er avril les fonds C-Quadrat Arts Total Return Global-AMI (700 millions d’euros) et C-Quadrat Arts Total Return Dynamic aux nouveaux investissements de particuliers et d’institutionnelles ainsi qu’aux nouveaux plans d'épargne en unités de compte. En revanche, les versements sur les plans d'épargne existants continueront d'être acceptés ainsi que les investissements provenant de contrats d’assurance vie de clients existants ou futurs.Ces deux fonds seront remplacés par le fonds flexible de droit allemand den C-Quadrat Arts Total Return Flexible (DE000A0YJMN7), qui a été lancé en novembre 2010 et dont l’allocation «très active» aux actions et plus exactement aux fonds d’actions peut varier de 0 à 100 % en fonction des conditions de marché. Le fonds, géré par Arts Asset Management affiche actuellement un encours de 9,63 millions d’euros

Aberdeen Asset Management Deutschland a annoncé le 21 janvier que son exercice au 30 septembre s’est soldé par des souscriptions brutes d’un milliard d’euros en Allemagne et en Autriche. L’encours atteignait à cette date 8,1 milliards d’'euros, dont 3,6 milliards pour les fonds de valeurs mobilières et 4,5 milliards pour la branche immobilière sinistrée (les remboursements de deux fonds DEGI sont gelés, et un troisième doit être liquidé).Depuis début octobre, Aberdeen AM a gagné des mandats pour environ 300 millions d’euros.Parmi les projets pour 2011 annoncés par le directeur général Hartmut Leser figure le lancement de fonds immobiliers institutionnels (lire notre article du 18 janvier). Sur le plan commercial, Aberdeen AM va mettre l’accent sur les fonds marchés émergents, sur les actions internationales, sur les obligations d’entreprises européennes et sur les fonds immobiliers institutionnels pan-européens.

Le capital-investisseur américain Lone Star tarde à trouver des acquéreurs pour la banque allemande IKB qu’il a achetée pour 137 millions d’euros à la KfW en 2007, rapporte Cinco Días. Selon les proches du dossier, les candidatures sérieuses pourraient ne se manifester que dans quelques mois. Cela dit, les garanties publiques obtenues par Lone Star pour IKB expirent en 2012.

Le hedge fund Macquarie Asian Alpha Fund de la banque australienne Macquarie a enregistré en 2010 une performance de 15,97 %, indique Hedgeweek. Investi selon la stratégie du market neutral equity, le fonds a triplé ses encours à 640 millions de dollars australiens l’an dernier.