According to one of its executives, Mutuelle Médicis (EUR2.5bn) has recently called off plans to launch a cross-border pension financing organisation (OFP) in Belgium, “because that is not any more in line» with its strategy, IPE reports.

The British firm M&G is planning to merge two UK equity funds, the UK Select, whose assets under management total GBP81m, and the UK Growth Fund (GBP546m), Money Marketing reports. The two funds are currently managed by Mike Felton, who took over as manager of the UK Growth Fund in December last year. Pending the approval of shareholders, the two funds will merge on 15 March this year.

At the end of 2012, short bets by hedge funds on Spanish equities represented only 0.376% of capital overall, compared with 0.475% when a prohibition on short-selling was introduced on 23 July. That represents a decline of 20.8%, Cinco Días reports.The newspaper stresses that the Spanish securities commission (CNMV) has already published its annual report on the financial markets in 2012, only two weeks after the year ended. In this the influence of the new chairwoman of the CNMV, Elvira Rodriguez, who decided to strengthen the communication and transparency policies of the regulator, may be discerned.

The European Commission will by this summer set out proposed legislation to et up a joint mechanism to resolve banking crises, the president of the Commission, José Manuel Barroso, announced on 15 January. “Following the adoption of the single supervision mechanism, the Commission will make a legislative proposal for a shared resolution mechanism for the banking sector before summer. I consider that an absolute priority,” Barroso said. Barroso, who was speaking before the European Parliament in Strasbourg, welcomed the compromise reached in December between European finance ministers to set up a joint banking supervision mechanism for the euro zone and other countries of the European Union (EU) that wish to participate. “Talks over the bill are in progress with Parliament, and I hope that the final step in its passage is coming within a matter of weeks, not months,” he said.

A research chair for equity investments and benchmarking in the area of infrastructure has been created in Singapore by the Edhec-Risk Institute with Meridiam Infrastructure (EUR2.8bn in assets) and Campbell Lutyens. It will employ up to three senior researchers at the Edhec campus in Singapore in the next three years.

The Australian asset management firm AMP Capital has announced recruitments for its alternative management team, with the appointments of Alistair Rew and Celine Nguyen as portfolio managers. Rew previously worked at XL Group, where he was most recently managing director. Nguyen, for her part, was an analyst at EIM Management, where she led due diligence missions for investments in hedge funds.

With the Kresge Foundation (USD3bn) and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), Morgan Stanley is participating in the first investment fund (with USD100m in capital) to allow those with low income and limited economic resources to gain access to health care and affordable housing. The fund also aims to finance services to help achieve these objectives in more deprived areas.The fund has sufficient capital to construct 500 housing units with integrated health care services, as well as eight health care centres with Federal permits to serve 75,000 people. The structure will put health care providers and residential developers in contact, since these groups have not often worked together previously, even though they frequently serve the same low-income populations in the same areas.The fund ia managed by New Markets Support Company, an affiliate of LISC, and is expected to contribute initially to the creation of 2,200 jobs in particularly deprived areas.

In a difficult fundraising environment, a growing number of new hedge fund firms is setting up shop in New York, where they estimate that it is easier to get noticed, the Wall Street Journal reports. Of the new hedge fund firms opening in Manhattan or Greenwich or Stamford in Connecticut, about 86% have chosen New York, on average, between 2003 and 2008, accorsing to eVestment. In 2009 and 2010, Manhattan accounted for 92% of fund launches. 2011 data indicate that the trend has continued.

The Préfon association on 15 January announced that its Préfon-Retraite pension scheme has generated inflows of EUR430m in the past twelve months, an increase of 3.4% year on year. The leader in elective retirement savings for public employees has also announced that the number of new members joining the Préfon-Retraite scheme rose 15% in 2012 compared with the previous year, with 8,500 new subscriptions. As of the end of September 2012, assets at Préfon-Retraite totalled about EUR11.2bn.

Partners Group on 16 January announced net inflows of EUR4.9bn in 2012. This amount is at the high end of the EUR4bn to EUR5bn range targeted by the private equity group, a statement says. Assets under management at the end of December totalled EUR28.6bn. The firm has also confirmed its projections of a total inflow of EUR4bn to EUR6bn in 2013.

Oscar Andreu, who had most recently served as head global emerging markets sales & distribution at UBS until the end of 2012, has been appointed as head of sales at Fidelity Switzerland, finews.ch reports. He will be responsible for overseeing banking/insurance and wealth management clients.

Borrowing by sustainable industrialised or emerging countries overall has evolved more positively than sovereign borrowing by countries that are not considered sustainable. The availability of resources shows every sign of having gained importance as a parameter in the evaluation of government debt These are the findings of the sustainability analysis department of Banque Sarasin, in its most recent commentary on the sustainability of governments and the valuation of their borrowing. The evolution of sustainable and unsustainable industrialised countries, which had previously been nearly synchronous, has become clearly differentiated since the outbreak of the debt crisis in Europe. With a difference of 27.3 percentage points compared with unsustainable countries, sustainable economies had done considerably better as of the end of December 2011. In 2012, the difference fell to 12.4 percentage points, but the valuation difference remained substantial over the entire period. Taking sustainability criteria into account also paid off in the selection of emerging market government debt. This conclusion is drawn from a consistent decline which peaked during the international financial crisis in 2008, as borrowing from sustainable emerging countries such as Brazil, Peru and Indonesia developed considerably more favourably than those of unsustainable countries such as China or South Africa. At the end of December 2012, the performance difference peaked at 77.0 percentage points. In the context of the current market, the risk looms as large as the performance in the evaluation of an investment. Aside from returns and volatility, the sustainability analysis team at Banque Sarasin therefore also calculated the Sharpe ratio for the countries under study. Sustainable countries also clearly stand out from the others in this area.

Swiss-based wealth management firm GAM is reorganising. It is moving from a financial holding company structure to a much more strongly integrated structure. This is not expected to result in any one-time restructuring costs, according to a statement released on 16 January.The current chairman and CEO of the holding company, Johannes de Gier, will now concentrate entirely on his responsibilities as chairman of the board of directors. David Solo, currently CEO of the two operational business units, will take over as CEO for the group.The finance and risk departments will be combined, and will now report to a chief financial officer for the group, in the person of Marco Suter, currently chief risk officer. The CFO of Gam Holding, Andrew Wills, will oversee the transition before leaving the group. The changes will be effective from 17 April this year.At the next general shareholders’ meeting, de Gier, Dieter Enkelmann, and Hugh Scott-Barrett will stand for new terms. Their current terms will end in April this year. Tanja Weiher is proposed as a new independent member, the board of directors would then grow from five to six members.

The asset management firm Fourpoints Investment Managers, born of a merger in March 2012 of PIM Gestion France and IT Asset Management (see Newsmanagers of 8 June 2012), has assets of EUR876m, compared with EUR750m at the time of the merger. EUR41m of that increase is due to market appreciation, and EUR85mof it to net inflows, Muriel Faure, CEO, and Michael Raud, deputy CEO and CIO, announced on Tuesday.At its presentation, the firm emphasized its French-registered, UCITS-compliant FCP fund Fourpoints Euro Global Leaders, which currently has only EUR16m in assets, though the strategy has nearly EUR150m, of which EUR120m are in a mandate received in the second half of last year from a pension fund. Over five years, the fund shows annual returns of 0.6%, compared with losses of 6,1% for the MSCI EMU DNR, and over three years, annual gains come to 7.4%, compared with 1.3% for the benchmark.

The US alternative management firm Mariner Investment Group on 15 January announced the acquisition of Concordia Advisors, an alternative asset management firm with offices in New York and London, and assets under management totalling about USD1bn. Following the complete separation of Concordia’s activities from Mariner, the investment teams at Concordia, and some support functions will join Mariner. Portfolio managers at Concordia, Arun Puri, John Eckert, James Wise, Chris Dillon and Jason Cheung, will continue to manage their respective funds under the Mariner brand name. The head of Concordia, Best Williams, becomes deputy chief investment officer at Mariner, and joins the investment board, as well as the board of directors at Mariner. Assets under management at Mariner in mid-2012 totalled about USD4.7bn.

BNP Paribas Wealth Management has appointed Florent Bronès as chief investment officer. He is responsible for establishing a global investment strategy and drawing up recommendations on specific investment themes in concert with the international network of chief investment advisors, which he coordinates.BNP Paribas Wealth Management is strengthening its investment strategy resources in order to meet the growing demand from its Private Banking clientele for market intelligence. Given the rapid and complex developments taking place in the financial marketplace, the ability to communicate a clear view of the markets is key for BNP Paribas Wealth Management to be able to provide clients with first-class advice on how to invest their assets. In order to meet this need, BNP Paribas Wealth Management is able, when drawing up its investment strategy, to call on Group-wide expertise in various specialist fields – including asset management, investment banking and real estate – in addition to Wealth Management’s own global and local analysis capability.Before joining BNP Paribas Wealth Management, Bronès served from 2008 as director of the buy-side research office for Global Equities and Commodity Derivatives (GECD), and concentrated on developing investment strategy.

Christian Pellis joined Amundi at the beginning of this year as global head of external distribution, a position that was before covered by the head of institutional clients.Pellis previously worked at LGT Capital Management, as head of distribution. He was also a member of the executive board (2010-2012).However, Pellis has spent the majority of his career at Threadneedle Investments, first in Frankfurt as regional director of sales for Europe (1998-2001), and then in London, where he served in a similar role as head of development for new markets in Europe and Latin America (2002-2004). He then spent six years as head of European distribution in London, specialised in institutional clients in Europe and Latin America (2004-2010).

As of 31 December, assets at the German asset management firm Mainfirst Asset Management topped EUR3bn, a record, compared with EUR1.1bn twelve months previously. The firm declined to tell Newsmangers the respective level of assets under management in eight open-ended funds and in mandates; the distribution appears to be about 50/50, according to some sources familiar with the matter. The largest fund from the Frankfurt-based asset management firm is the Mainfirst Top European Ideas Fund, with about EUR1.3bn.Mainfirst AM did not wish to provide details about net subscription levels either. A statement says merely that the product range grew in 2012 with the addition of a quantitative equity strategy, the MainFirst North America fund (managed by a former Swisscanto manager), two bond strategies, including the MainFirst Emerging Markets Corporate Bond Fund Balanced (managed by former Clariden Leu managers), the recruitment of a team from Postbank Financial Services (which will bring out a new fund this year), and lastly, the creation of a multi-asset class unit. For the latter, Mainfirst has already applied for sales licenses for three open-ended absolute return funds, which will be managed by a team recruited from DB Advisors.

AXA Private Equity on Tuesday, 15 January announced the sale of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation of its stake in the Phönix/Strack group , a leader in the design and production of special plumbing for companies active in the energy, petrochemical and chemical industries. The sale price totals EUR82m. The completion of the operation is pending approval from antitrust authorities.

The German insurer Allianz on 15 January confirmed its operating projections for 2012, despite EUR455m in charges due to Hurricane Sandy in the United States. “Despite the impact of hurricane Sandy, we continue to predict an operating profit for 2012 of over EUR9bn,” the CFO of Allianz, Dieter Wemmer, says in a statement. The insurer at the end of October announced the operating profit outlook of over EUR9bn at the end of October, but had warned that this figure included a merely provisional evaluation of damages related to hurricate Sandy, which was not disclosed at that time. Stating that the figure remains provisional, Allianz now estimates the damage at USD590m, or EUR455m, the total cost of reimbursements to clients and of their associated expenses.

As of 30 April, Peter Ebertz will be leaving his job as managing partner of Bankhaus Lampe KG (a business owned by the Oetker family), for personal reasons. The private bank states that Ebertz is responsible for branches and relationships with high net worth private clients, as well as business clients.Nicholas Blanchard, who joined Lampe on 1 March 2012 from Bayerische HypoVereinsbank (HVB), will be appointed as a managing partner alongside Stephan Schüller and Ulrich Cosse. He will be responsible for all market activities of the bank.The Düsseldorf institute also reports that Ute Gerbaulet (formerly of Commerzbank) was recruited on 1 January 2013 as head of the capital markets & advisory unit; she also joins the extended executive board of Bankhaus Lampe.

The Californian pension fund CalSTRS has invested USD50m in the global macro strategy from the manager of the hedge fund MKP Capital Management in the quarter ending on 31 December, Pensions & Investments reports. MKP Capital is the third hedge fund manager to be selected by CalSTRS, whose assets under management total about USD154.3bn.

Fidelity Worldwide Investment has today announced that it is recruiting for its institutional team in France, with the arrival of Anne-Charlotte Aguttes as head of the Clients – Institutional and Corporate department. She joins Jean-Marc Didier, who is head of this activity, with whom she will work closely to strengthen Fidelity’s presence serving French institutional clients, a statement says. Before joining Fidelity, Anne-Charlotte Aguttes served as senior RFP Manager at State Street Global Advisors in Paris, where she had worked since 2006, as a specialist in institutional requests for proposals, covering all strategies and asset classes offered by the group.

The most popular investment criterion for institutional investors in 2013 will be the quality of results announced by businesses, before macroeconomic data is taken into account, according to the most recent European Corporate Survey by Crédit Agricole Cheuvreux, conducted between 23 October and 6 November, of 270 international investors in 28 countries. More than 50% of international investors, and 78% of US investors, say that profits at businesses will be the most important criterion in their investment decisions in 2013. Only 24% of investors estimate that macroeconomic criteria will be important, compared with 32% currently. The survey finds that 81% of investors surveyed estimate that the Euro Stoxx 50 index will rise until 30 June 2013, while 46% estimate that the index will remain in a range of 0 to +10%, and 35% predict that the index will gain at least 10%. One third of investors hope to increase the number of corporate meetings in 2012, as “corporate access” is now indissociable from the investment decision. 50% of US investors who participated in the study would like to increase the number of corporate meetings in the next 12 months. British and French investors value these contacts: 43% and 34%, respectively, meet with more than 60 companies per year (compared with an average of 27).

Investors in 2013 are looking for the best terms possible, with an appetite for risk not seen in nine years, according to the latest BofA Merrill Lynch survey of a sample of 354 respondents representing cumulative assets under management of USD754bn, undertaken between 4 and 0 January.Global investors have entered 2013 in buoyant but not yet exuberant mood. The new year sees asset allocators assigning more funds to equities than at any time since February 2011, while their confidence in the world’s economic outlook has reached its most positive level since April 2010.Investors’ appetite for risk in their portfolios is now at its highest in nine years, while an increasing number judge equities as undervalued – particularly in Europe. Moreover, investors have reduced cash holdings to 3.8 percent from 4.2 percent in December.Participants’ perception of the U.S. fiscal crisis as the biggest “tail risk” for asset markets has calmed (down nearly 20 percentage points in two months), though it remains their largest concern. Views of China remain very positive, with a net 63 percent still anticipating a stronger economy this year, but one in seven sees a Chinese hard landing as their number one risk.Investors’ bullishness reflects a growing confidence in economic recovery. A net 59 percent now expect the global economy to strengthen this year, compared to a net 40 percent a month ago. This marks the panel’s most positive outlook since April 2010. An increasing proportion of respondents expect inflation to pick up as well.The panel has shifted its stance on financial stocks strongly, moving to its first net overweight in global bank names since February 2007 following a 15 percentage move versus last month. Nevertheless, banks are still perceived as the global equity market’s most undervalued sector. The existing overweight in insurance has also been extended, particularly in Europe, and now stands its highest level since January 2007.

The SS&C GlobeOp hedge fund performance index posted a gross return of 1.27% in December, Investment Europe reports. The index of net inflows (Capital Movement Index), for its part, shows a decline of 2.58% in the month of January. Assets under administration by the GlobeOp platform currently represent about 10% of assets invested in the hedge fund sector.

The Dow Jones Credit Suisse hedge fund index gained 1.48% in December, following gains of 0.64% in November. For the year as a whole, the index is up 7.67%. All strategies of the index contributed to this performance, except the dedicated short bias strategy, which lost 2.95% in December, and more than 20% for the year. Among the best results of the month are emerging market strategies, with 2.3% in December and 10.28% for the year as a whole, and event-driven, which was up 1.98% for the month, and 10.63% for the year.

Le Parlement européen a adopté la nouvelle réglementation sur les agences de notation dont les défaillances et l’influence avaient été pointées du doigt après l'éclatement de la crise financière de 2007. Le texte, qui résulte d’un compromis trouvé entre le Conseil, la Commission et le Parlement européens, devrait entrer en vigueur cette année.

Les prix à la consommation ont augmenté de 0,4% en décembre dans la zone euro, en raison de la hausse des prix de l’alimentation principalement, selon des données publiées mercredi par Eurostat. Le taux d’inflation sur un an est ressorti à 2,2%, comme en novembre, a ajouté Eurostat en confirmant son estimation préliminaire communiquée le 4 janvier.

La banque suisse UBS a ouvert une filiale en nom propre en Chine mercredi, ce qui lui permettra de mener des opérations en yuans dans des domaines clefs comme la gestion de fortune. Une quarantaine de banques étrangères, dont JPMorgan Chase & Co, Morgan Stanley et HSBC ont déjà créé des filiales en Chine pour tirer parti de la croissance de la seconde économie mondiale.