RWC Partners va fermer son fonds RWC Asia Absolute Alpha, après le départ du gérant Garret Mallal, rapporte Citywire Selector. Le fonds ne gérait que 14,3 millions de dollars.

Le gouvernement turc a transféré les participations de l’Etat dans des grandes entreprises turques au fonds souverain du pays, rapporte le Financial Times. Cela inclut des participations dans Turkish Airlines, TPAO, the Turkish oil company, Halkbank et Turk Telekom. Les dirigeants turcs indiquent que cela donnera au fonds souverain le pouvoir financier d’accéder à des crédits moins chers qui seront utilisés pour soutenir des projets d’infrastructures.

La société de capital-invesetissement belge Gimv a indiqué le 7 février que la banque centrale de Norvège, Norges Bank, qui gère le fonds de pension du gouvernement, a publié une déclaration de transparence selon laquelle elle a franchi, le 23 janvier dernier, le seuil réglementaire de 3% à la baisse en détenant 760.004 d’actions et de droits de vote de Gimv, soit 2,99%, contre 3,02% précédemment. L’Autorité belge des services et marchés financiers (FSMA) et Gimv ont été informés de ce franchissement de seuil le 27 janvier dernier.

La Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) britannique a ouvert le débat mercredi sur «l’investissement dans des actifs illiquides au travers de fonds ouverts et les problèmes que cela peut poser aux gérants et aux investisseurs», selon un communiqué. Avec ce «discussion paper» ouvert à commentaires jusqu’au 8 mai, la FCA cherche à savoir si elle doit modifier son cadre réglementaire.

Credit Suisse va transférer des prêts immobiliers suisses dans un fonds afin d’alléger son bilan et augmenter ses coussins de fonds propres. Le groupe zurichois est en train de lever de l’argent auprès d’investisseurs institutionnels pour ce véhicule qui contiendra des créances d’immobilier résidentiel et commercial suisse, précise un communiqué. Le fonds, qui se concentrera sur des prêts de courts terme adossés au Libor, devrait rapporter entre 0,2% et 0,5% par an compte tenu de l’environnement de taux d’intérêt négatifs dans la Confédération.

A la suite d’un problème technique, nous ne sommes pas en mesure de publier la revue de presse du mercredi 8 février. Toutes nos excuses à nos lecteurs.

Le gérant crédit BlueBay Asset Management a annoncé mardi le départ de son directeur général Alex Khein, qui était en poste depuis 12 ans et restera conseiller jusqu'à fin 2017 avant de lancer un projet technologique. Son successeur, Erich Gerth, un ancien d’Aviva Investors travaillant chez BlueBay depuis 2012, prendra ses fonctions en mai. Il restera basé à Londres. Détenu par Royal Bank of Canada, BlueBay affiche 55 milliards de dollars d’encours.

La société de gestion Generali Investments vient d'annoncer le lancement officiel d'un nouveau fonds multi-asset, baptisé GIS Global Multi Asset Income. Le Fonds a pour objectif de générer une appréciation du capital à long terme et un niveau de revenu stable, en procédant à une allocation mondiale entre classes d’actifs affichant des rendements attractifs. ll investira notamment sur des titres vifs, des OPCVM, des dérivés et des options.

Le gérant de fonds espagnol “value“, Francisco García Paramés, vient d'annoncer le lancement de sa nouvelle société de gestion Cobas Asset Management. Son développement sur le marché français sera confié à Veronica Vieira, qui vient d'être nommée responsable commerciale et directrice du développement pour la France.

Une analyse effectuée par Le Temps nous montre de quelle manière les technologies de décentralisation et de stockage de l'information laissent la place à des zones d'ombre juridique rendant la blockchain difficile à décrypter malgré quelques progrès.

L'ancien directeur de la distribution et des relations institutionnelles de la Barings a intégré l'équipe commerciale de Mirabaud depuis le mois de janvier.

Unigestion se porte acquéreur d'Akina pour créer un leader mondial du private equity global petites et moyennes capitalisations, avec 6 milliards USD d’actifs sous gestion.

Interrogé à l'occasion de la conférence de presse des résultats du groupe sur une éventuelle cession ou cotation de son activité de gestion d'actifs, Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, le directeur général de BNP Paribas, a indiqué qu'il « n'y a pas de plan particulier dans ce domaine ». Il a ajouté que « cette activité est bien au sein du groupe BNP Paribas et a vocation à y rester ». D'autres grandes banques européennes ont en effet parfois coté en Bourse leur activité, comme Amundi chez Crédit Agricole, ou cédé leur filiale comme Unicredit avec Pioneer.

selon nos informations, le groupe français de chimie Arkema a intégré, en 2016, deux OPCVM ouverts à son Plan Epargne Groupe. Il s’agit de fonds diversifiés et flexibles principalement investis sur l’Europe, éligibles aux PEA PME. La société a été accompagnée par le consultant EPS Partenaires. Arkema a réalisé un chiffre d’affaire de 7,7 milliards d’euros en 2015 et compte 19000 salariés.

The Swiss banking group Vontobel on 6 February announced that it has signed a strategic alliance with Bank of Singapore, to allow clients of the Singapore private bank to place their assets in Switzerland with the Zurich-based bank. The agreement is also expected to allow the bank to benefit from all services and financial products from Vontobel. “Clients of Bank of Singapore may select Vontobel or Bank of Singapore to manage their assets deposited in Zurich,” Vontobel says in a statement.“This agreement will allow us to better meet the expectations of Asian clients, who are increasingly interested in placing their assets in our centres in Hong Kong and Singapore as well as in Switzerland,” says Olivier Denis, global market head at Bank of Singapore, in a statement. “With this new expertise, we are one of the few Asian private banks to be able to offer a wide range of services to our clients in three major financial centres: Singapore, Hong Kong, and Switzerland.” Brian Fischer, director of external assets at Vontobel, says the agreement represents “a new stage in the international development of our offerings of services for financial institutions”.

p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 120%; } MetLife Investment Management (MetLife IM), an institutional asset management affiliate of the US insurer MetLife, on 6 February announced the recruitment of Maya Kiyokawa as director of the institutional client group. Kiyokawa will be based in Tokyo, and will be responsible for overseeing the development of the activity serving institutionals in Japan. Before joining MetLife, Kiyokawa, who has over 25 years of experience, served as director of sales for alternative products in Japan at Teneo Partners. Before that, she was a senior consultant at Osborne Incorporated. Over her career, she has also served in senior positions at Deutsche Asset Management Japan and Fidelity Investments Japan.

Five British discretionary fund managers (DFM), Brewin Dolphin, Brooks Macdonald, Investec Wealth & Investment, Quilter Cheviot and Rathbones, have announced the launch of the DFM Alliance, an educational platform for independent financial advisers (IFA) to allow them to improve their relationships with clients through information, education and collaboration.Through this initiative, DFM Alliance aims to train financial advisers in the attractiveness of outsourcing investment management, to provide them with practical information about ways to approach discretionary investment, and to collaborate with them to improve practices in the interests of the end client. The five partners in the DFM Alliance, whose cumulative assets under managemetn come to over GBP130bn, will be launching a series of initiatives, including several conferences during June 2017.

p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 120%; } Assets under management in Swiss investment funds as of the end of December 2016 totalled CHF911.7bn, up by CHF20.7bn, or 2.3%, compared with the end of 2015, according to statistics released by the Swiss fund and asset management association (SFAMA). The causes of this growth were net inflows and a positive market impact which represented over CHF11bn. Bond funds, money market funds and commodity funds also contributed to this development. However, divestments and depreciations have been observed for alternative investment funds, for a total of nearly CHF7.6bn. Counting discretionary wealth management mandates for over CHF1.2trn, over CHF2trn are managed by the Swiss asset management industry. After the United Kingdom, France and Germany, Switzerland holds a place as the fourth-largest asset management market in Europe.

p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 120%; } British portfolios, a substantial part of which consist of assets not denominated in pounds sterling, profited considerably from the depreciation of the currency which followed the Brexit vote, with average returns of over 13%, according to the results of the annual global barometer of portfolios by Natixis Global Asset Management. The performance of portfolios in the United Kingdom was far higher than in the United States, which takes second place with average returns of about 8.2%. French portfolios take sixth place, with average returns of about 4.8%. These results are based on an analysis of 564 “moderate” or “balanced” model portfolios supplied by advisers and wealth managers in second quarter 2016 in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sinngapore, and Latin America. A statement explains that the variation in returns in 2016 may be almost entirely due to a difference in the contribution to returns of exposure to equities. In the United Kingdom, equities contributed 11% of returns, out of a total of 13.5%, of which 9% came from foreign equity investments. In Luxembourg, equities represent only 0.8% out of average returns of 3%. The strength of equity markets also stimulated performance in the United States and the Netherlands. According to the study, with the exception of the United Kingdom, returns from equities are generally between 5% and 8%, while bonds range between a total of 4% and 5% and diversified funds between 3% and 5%. The major difference between the returns for the various asset classes is due to alternative strategies, which vary from -2.1% for advisers based in Luxembourg to +3.9% in the United Kingdom. Although these returns are relatively modest, they underscore a trend for advisers to prefer alternative strategies with low risks and low returns, to replace bonds, rather than high risk strategies with higher returns. According to the report, currency risks also had a considerable impact on British portfolios invested in foreign currencies. “These results are largely explained by currency risks, which is not surprising, as currency fluctuations in 2016 were the strongest since 2008, and had a marked impact on the portfolios under study. For example, a British investor with an unhedged exposure to US equities will have earned additional returns of 19% as a result of depreciation of the pound sterling against the US dollar. For euro zone equities, the figure is also estimated at about 16%, and 23% for Japanese equities. The impact of currency risks was also observed for diversified funds, emerging market bonds and high yield bond funds, which are often not covered by advisers,” says Matthew Riley, head of research in the portfolio research & consulting group at Natixis Global Asset Management.

BlackRock, with net sales of EUR46.7 billion, was the best selling fund promoter for the year 2016 overall, well ahead of Aviva (+EUR22.0 billion) and Nordea (+EUR18.3 billion), according to a review of the European Fund Market from Thomson Reuters Lipper.Taking into account that the flows from BlackRock contain EUR26.6 billion from their ETF branch iShares means that the traditional mutual funds branch of the business saw net inflows of EUR20.1 billion; i.e., the ETF business was — in terms of net flows — bigger than the traditional mutual fund business of BlackRock. “These numbers could be another hint that the European mutual fund industry is undergoing a structural change. In addition, this means that if one looked only at traditional mutual funds, BlackRock would have finished the year as the second best selling fund promoter behind Aviva”, says the study.The assets under management in the European fund industry increased from EUR8.9 trillion to EUR9.4 trillion over the course of 2016. Bond funds (+EUR110.9 billion) were the best selling asset type for 2016.Within the segment of long-term mutual funds Bond Global (+EUR22.1 billion) was the best selling sector, followed by Equity Global (+EUR19.6 billion) and Bond EUR Short Term (+EUR15.3 billion).European Fund Flow Trends 2016 Generally speaking, the year 2016 seemed to be another good year for the European fund industry, even though the net inflows of EUR268.7 billion into mutual funds were well below the record inflows of the years 015 (+EUR386.0 billion) and 2014 (+EUR351.0 billion). The number for 2016 was far above the long-term average of EUR162.2 billion. With regard to these numbers, it was not surprising that 2016 was also a good year for the promoters of ETFs; ETFs contributed EUR41.1 billion to the inflows. BlackRock (EUR640.3 billion) was also by far the largest fund promoter in Europe, followed by JP Morgan (EUR302.2 billion) and Deutsche Bank (EUR262.6 billion).The European fund market declined by 556 funds over the course of 2016. Equity funds showed the highest number of mergers (330) and liquidations (541), while mixed-asset funds showed the highest number of fund launches (707).

p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 120%; } The index provided Solactive AG has announced the launch of the Solactive GLD Long USD Gold index, which will be used as the underlying for a new ETF, the SPDR Long Dollar Gold Trust (GLDW), listed on Nyse Arca. The index eliminates the potential impact of the US dollar on the price of gold, allowing investors to hold gold denominated in a variety of currencies other than the US dollar, including the euro, the Japanese yen, pound sterling, the Canadian dollar, the Swedish kroner and the Swiss franc.

p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 120%; } The service provider Thomson Reuters on 6 February announced that it has acquired two companies which will add to its firepower in the area of regulatory data. The group is acquiring Clarient, a client reference data platform which aims to satisfy the Know Your Customer (KYC) rule, which has hitherto been controlled and used by DTCC, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Goldman sachs, J.P. Morgan, BNY Mellon and State Street, among others; on the other hand, Avox, a specialist in the provision of data concerning indentifying information for legal entities, previously owned by DTCC. With these two acquisitions, Thomson Reuters is seeking to add to the services it offers to 23 financial institutions worldwide, with a total of more than 200,000 KYC records.

p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 120%; } Deka Immobilien has announced that it has acquired an office building in San Francisco from a real estate fund of Credit Suisse. The property, acquired for about EUR136m, is expected to be added to the portfolio of the open fund Deka-ImmobilienGlobal. It becomes the first real estate investment by Deka Immobilien to be made on the West coast of the United States.

p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 120%; } Idinvest Partners has appointed Alban Wyniecki to the position of investment director the Growth fund, the firm has announced on its website. Wyniecki, who joined the firm in November 2016, previously worked for two years at Partech Ventures, where he was responsible for several investments in Europe and the United States. He previously served at Dassault Systems, where he successively led the strategy team for the Catia brand and then the strategy team for the group. In this period he was responsible for technical alliances, financial and strategic planning for 3DS and its brands, and made more than 10 acquisitions. Wyniecki began his career with several research and engineering posts at Salomon, EADS and Geonumeric.

p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 120%; } In January, the Italian asset management firm Azimut posted net inflows of EUR507m, Milano Finanza reports. This brings assets under management to EUR44.2bn. In 2016, Azimut posted net inflows of EUR6.5bn, near a 2015 record of EUR6.7bn.

BlackRock devrait fermer un fonds multi-stratégies de performance absolue à la fin du mois, croit savoir le site spécialisé Citywire. Le BSF Multi-Strategy Absolute Return Fund, lancé en juin 2014 et domicilié au Luxembourg, sera fermé formellement le 28 février prochain, car il n’a pas attiré suffisamment d’actifs. Fin janvier 2017, les actifs du fonds s’élevaient à seulement 47 millions d’euros.

Old Mutual International, filiale du groupe Old Mutual Wealth, a nommé Ian Kloss au poste de directeur général à Singapour. L’intéressé a rejoint Old Mutual International en août 2014 en tant que responsable commercial à Hong Kong. Dans le cadre de ses nouvelles fonctions, il sera chargé de poursuivre la stratégie de développement de la société dans la région, en renforçant notamment ses capacités de distribution et en ciblant de nouvelles typologies de clientèle, comme les clients très fortunés. Il devra également renforcer les relations établies avec les banques privées et d’autres institutions de la région. Ian Kloss remplace Steve Hickman qui a décidé de quitter la société pour poursuivre d’autres opportunités de carrière, indique Old Mutual International.

Le fournisseur de services financiers Kneip, qui travaille notamment à destination du secteur de la gestion d’actifs, a annoncé le 6 février la nomination de Gary Janaway au poste de responsable des opérations (chief operating officer, COO), nomination effective depuis le 1er janvier. Gary Janaway sera entre autres chargé de la transformation digitale de Kneip. Avant de rejoindre Kneip, Gary Janaway, qui a plus de 25 ans d’expérience dans le secteur de la gestion d’actifs, a notamment travaillé en qualité de directeur des opérations chez Schroders.

Le Pays de Galles va se lancer cette semaine à la recherche d’une société pour superviser 13 milliards de livres d’actifs, rapporte le Financial Times fund management. Les huit fonds de pension locaux ont regroupé leurs actifs dans le cadre d’une stratégie initiée par George Osborne, l’ancien Chancelier de l’Echiquier, visant à créer un petit nombre de gros fonds « souverains » qui investiraient dans des infrastructures vitales au Royaume-Uni. Les fonds de pension gallois, qui ont obtenu le feu vert pour regrouper leurs actifs en décembre, cherchent un « opérateur » pour superviser leurs investissements. Celui-ci aura le pouvoir de sélectionner les sociétés de gestion auprès desquelles le fonds investira.

Danske Asset Management et Danica ont choisi de regrouper leurs ressources administratives et salariales, rapporte FinansWatch Asset Management. L’objectif est de devenir l’un des principaux gestionnaires d’actifs en Europe du Nord, a déclaré Henrik Gade Jepsen, responsable de Danske Asset Management, à FWAM. Dans ce cadre, Danske AM a recruté Attila Olesen de SEB en tant que responsable des clients institutionnels.