p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Legg Mason has announced the creation of the Legg Mason Retirement Advisory Council, which will aim to generate ideas in the area of retirement. The think tank is composed of 14 personalities from the world of finance, specialised in this area. It will meet every quarter to debate products, services and practices in the industry. The 14 members are Ted Benna, president of the Malvern Benefits Corporation 401(k) Association, Thomas Clark Jr., president of Lockton Financial Group, Paul D’Aiutolo, vice-president of UBS Wealth Management, Charles Epstein, founder of the 401(k) Coach Program, Robert L. Francis, chief operating officer of National Retirement Partners, Joseph Frustaglio, vice-president and head of Retirement Plans Sales, National Sales Manager at Nationwide, Gary Kleinschmidt, head of retirement specialists at Legg Mason, Dave Master, managing director strategy and business development at Legg Mason, Joseph Masterson, senior vice president at Diversified Investment Advisors, Joe Mrozek, national sales manager – retirement at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Edward O’Connor, managing director, head of retirement services at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Michael Shamburger, vice president of National Sales Manager 401k, The Hartford Financial Services Group, Scott Sides, senior vice president and corporate benefits director at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, and Marcia Wagner, managing partner at Wagner Law Group.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Carmignac Gestion has announced the arrival in its trading department of Alexandre Pitois-Jones. Before joining the French management firm, Pitois-Jones was an equities derivatives trader at Amundi Asset Management. His arrival brings the number of traders in the trading department, led by Nicolas Courbon, to four.
The structure officially launched in early November by Christian Bito, Vladimir Danesi and Jean-Luc Fargin, CBT Gestion (see Newsmanagers of 20 September and 8 November), has already collected EUR25m, of which EUR1.8m are for its first FCP fund, CBT action euro vol 20.Other products will follow, possibly in January, with the objective of extending the strategy to diversified and open-ended products which would also use the management approach oriented to volatility, with a supplementary layer of tactical investment.
The Edhec-Risk Institute has released a publication which proposes a formal analysis of the optimal investment policy and risk management practices of sovereign wealth funds, Hedgeweek reports.The results suggest that the investment strategy for a sovereign wealth fund should involve a state-dependent allocation to three building blocks: a performance-seeking portfolio (typically heavily invested in equities), an endowment-hedging portfolio (customised to meet the risk exposure in the sovereign wealth fund endowment streams), and a liability-hedging portfolio (heavily invested in bonds for interest rate hedging motives, and in assets exhibiting attractive inflation-hedging properties when the implicit or explicit liabilities of the sovereign wealth fund exhibit inflation indexation).
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } ICFA reports that Northern Trust has announced the appointment of Peter Cherecwich as director of its global fund services (GFS) division. He will be based in Chicago, and replaces Wilson Leech, who has been appointed CEO for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Stewart Cowley, manager of the Global Strategic Bond fund at Old Mutual Asset Managers, has announced that he has liquidated the positions the fund had held on Spanish debt, according to Fundstrategy. As of the end of September, his portfolio still contained 3.8% Spanish government bonds.
According to Ucits Hedge, Trafalgar Capital Management has announced it has teamed up with Chris Poil to launch its first UCITS fund. The Trafalgar Quadrant Fund, a European Long/Short UCITS equity fund, mainly invests in UK Equities drawn and focuses on recovery situations. Chris Poil was chairman of the Global Senior Management Team at ING Baring Asset Management. He acted as investment consultant to Cheyne Capital from 2006-2009.
According to Ucits Hedge, Heptagon Capital, a London based USD2.7Bn specialist asset management business, has announced the launch of a new Irish UCITS fund which will be managed by Yacktman Asset Management. Based in Austin, Texas, Yacktman is a long-only US Equity manager, which is 100% owned by its employees, and has over USD5.5Bn in assets under management.
Reeves Investment Management (RIM) has appointed Mike Sargeant as investment director with responsibility for developing its current range of investment strategies. He will also be a member of the senior management team responsible for the asset allocation and fund selection of the company’s discretionary portfolios.Prior to joining RIM, Mike Sargeant was managing director of Pharon IFA for 6 years from 2004, and also managing director of its associated company, Lawrence House Fund Managers, an independent boutique investment house dedicated to supporting IFAs, prior to its acquisition by Brooks Macdonald Asset Management in September 2009. RIM is part of Reeves & Co LLP, an accountancy firm. It provides discretionary management services to Reeves & Co clients, especially those advised by Reeves Financial Planning, the firm’s IFA arm. RIM currently has over GBP70million invested in portfolios across three main investment strategies, Income; Balanced; Growth, with exposure to most asset classes through the use of collective investments and structured products.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Investment Week reports that laying off the global equities team led by Ross Hollyman, who joined Liontrust from GAM in October 2009, cost the management firm more than GBP781,000 in severance pay and costs to close down the structures in Guernsey and Jersey. The team managed less than USD1m in assets.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } For the half-year ending on 30 September 2010, Liontrust Asset Management has posted a pre-tax loss of GBP1.6m, compared with pre-tax profits of GBP0.7m, and performance commission revenues of GBP199,000, compared with GBP2.24m. Assets as of 30 September totalled nearly GBP1.13bn, compared with GBP2.18bn one year earlier, but they totalled nearly GBP1.25bn as of 23 November. In addition, the British management firm has posted net subscriptions of GBP41m since the beginning of the period as of 23 November, with more than GBP76m since the beginning of October. CEO John Ions says losses in the first half of the fiscal year should be viewed in the context of the rapid changes which have been taking place at businesses in the past few months, an increase in marketing spending to generate subscriptions, new activities, and a rebound in net subscriptions. The other reason for the loss is, of course, related to the fact that assets under management have declined, in a trend which has since then successfully been reversed. This has led to net subscriptions of GBP9bn in July-September, which was the first positive quarter since the first calender quarter of 2008. The CEO adds that the last fiscal year in which Liontrust posted positive net subscriptions was 2003-2004. Ions also says that due to the success of the marketing campaign so far, the firm has decided to allocate a further GBP0.7m to its budget for second half (until 31 March), meaning that the increased total marketing spending throughout the period will have been GBP1.2m.
According to Financial News, Man Group, that recently acquired GLG, is offering its employees the change to relocate abroad, GLG co-founder Pierre Lagrange told a roundtable of journalists this morning. He added that «very few» have moved so far.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Australian management firm Ankura Capital Pty Ltd, an affiliate of BNY Mellon Asset Management, has obtained a management mandate from Russell Investments for an allocation from the Australian Shares Enhances Income Fund, BNY Mellon AM has announced. It is the second mandate for Akura’s high-yield Australian equities strategy. In May, the management firm also received a high yield mandate from IPAC for its diversified high yeild fund Axa Generator. Assets at Ankura for Australian and Japanese equities total about AUD1bn. The firm, based in Sydney, manages institutional funds, primarily for Australian clients.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Asian boutique Hamon Asset Management has launched a new absolute return fund focused on Greater China, Citywire reports. The Hamon Greater China Absolute Return Fund, based in Luxembourg, will be managed by the firm’s trio of China specialists, Nina Wu, Lisa Jiang and William Liu.
La société d’investissement, via son fonds Carlyle Europe Partners III, a annoncé hier le rachat auprès de Primondo Specialty Group (filiale d’Arcandor) d’un portefeuille de six actifs dans le secteur de la distribution de détail (Versandhaus Walz, Planet Sports, Bon’A Parte, Elégance, Mirabeau et 50% de Vertbaudet Germany). Les termes financiers de l’opération n’ont pas été précisés. Carlyle a par ailleurs réalisé, aux côté d’Accel Partners, un investissement minoritaire dans OzForex Group, une plate-forme en ligne de services forex.
Selon DTZ, les besoins de refinancement en immobilier d’entreprise seront de 126 milliards de dollars en Europe sur 2011-2013. Le cabinet de conseil, qui constate que la situation est tendue au Royaume-Uni, en Espagne et en Irlande, plaide aussi pour une diversification des créanciers.
Dans le cadre de son plan d’austérité budgétaire 2011-2014 qui a suscité des réactions mitigées, l’Irlande a prévu de réaliser 40% des 15 milliards d’euros d’efforts budgétaires dès 2011.
La multiplication des dark pools et le trading à haute fréquence (HFT) posent des problèmes et doivent être remis en cause, a déclaré mercredi Christian Noyer, membre du conseil des gouverneurs de la Banque centrale européenne (BCE). Devant les membres de la commission d’enquête parlementaire sur les mécanismes de spéculation, le gouverneur de la Banque de France a d’autre part souligné la nécessité de réduire l’effet de levier des institutions financières pour limiter les risques. «Cette multiplication de dark pools a été une erreur tragique, je souhaite qu’on revienne là-dessus et qu’on remette les choses en ordre», a-t-il estimé. Prié de dire si les réflexions en cours sur le sujet se traduiraient par des décisions, il a souligné que ces problèmes relevaient plutôt des superviseurs des marchés, comme l’Autorité des marchés financiers pour la France. Christian Noyer a par ailleurs jugé que «le trading à haute fréquence est un vrai problème».
KKR aurait selon Reuters et Bloomberg reçu le soutien de Vestar Capital Partners ainsi que d’un fonds dirigé par l’associé de Centerview James Kilts pour concrétiser le rachat du groupe américain d’agroalimentaire Del MPonte Foods. L’offre serait de 18,50 dollars par titre, soit une valorisation de la cible de 3,58 milliards de dollars.
Le cours de l’or coté en euro a atteint mercredi son niveau le plus haut depuis le 9 juin, la monnaie européenne ayant accentué son recul contre le dollar dans le contexte de défiance des investisseurs à l'égard de l'économie du bloc monétaire européen. L’or en euro a touché un plus haut de séance à 1.037,92 euros l’once. L’once d’or en dollar a atteint 1.379,02 dollars, contre 1.376,20 mardi soir à New York. En fin de matinée, l’euro se traitait à un peu plus de 1,33 dollar après avoir touché un plus bas de deux mois à 1,3284 dollar et enfoncé sa moyenne mobile à 100 jours.
Alors que le gouvernement irlandais dévoilera les détails de son plan d’austérité à 15 heures, les rendements irlandais subissent de nouvelles tensions. Le taux des obligations à dix ans s’est écarté ce matin de 24 points de base (pb) à 8,5 %. Standard & Poor’s vient de dégrader de deux crans la note du pays qui passe de AA- à A. Parallèlement, les discussions sur un plan d’aide se poursuivent. «L'étendue d’un programme n’est pas encore décidée mais la somme de 85 milliards d’euros est discutée», a déclaré le Premier ministre Brian Cowen devant le parlement. Les rendements se tendent également sur les obligations grecques, espagnoles et portugaises, entre 10 et 20 pb.
L’Agence France Trésor annonce qu’elle a servi mercredi 896 millions d’euros de soumissions non compétitives à l’issue de son adjudication de bons du Trésor (BTF) du 22 novembre. Le montant total des BTF émis dans le cadre de cette opération s'élève à 8,42 milliards d’euros.
La croissance de l'économie britannique s’est confirmée à 0,8% au troisième trimestre, portée par l’excédent commercial, selon les données officielles pubiées mercredi.Dans sa deuxième estimation, l’Office national de la statistique (ONS) confirme la croissance de 2,80% sur un an du Produit intérieur brut.