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14/05/2012

Selection professionals unite

Independent fund selection specialists are seeking to make their profession more widely known with the creation of the Association of Professional Fund Investors (APFI), Agefi Switzerland reports. The four co-founders of the association, Mussie Kidane (head of fund selection at Pictet), Luca de Biasi (BSI), Carlos Fernandez (Inversis) and Rooland Meerdter (Propinquity Advisors) initially sought to create a contact network, but the association may also form a decisive vector for making the profession more widely known. “We want to make our voices heard as actors. Nobody else knows the fund industry the same way selectors do,” says co-founder Meerdter.
14/05/2012

Hedge fund assets in Asia up

Hedge funds focused on Asia have recuperated all the assets they lost in the poor performance of last year, even though the sector has underperformed local markets in first quarter 2012, according to statistics from Hedge Fund Research, cited by the Financial Times. Assets totalled USD86.7bn as of the end of March, compared with EUR83.4bn as of the end of 2010. China dominates the local sector, and now 30% of the world’s hedge funds are based in the country (including Hong Kong), putting it just behind the United States. However, most Asian, funds are much smaller than funds in the United States and other countries, and by volume, they represent only 4% of the USD2.13trn in assets in the sector.
14/05/2012

Jean-Pierre Jouyet calls for overhaul of savings taxation

Household savings, which are essential to the functioning of the economy, are subject to all kinds of legislative initiatives, particularly in the area of taxation. “Unfortunately, the current policy on savings is not totally up to the challenge of financing our ecnomy,” the chairman of the French financial market authority (Autorité des Marchés Financiers, or AMF), Jean-Pierre Jouyet, claimed on 11 May at the 2012 academic AMF and ACP conference (the latter being the French prudential control authority), dedicated to the consequences of the financial crisis on household savings and sales of financial products. According to the AMF chairman, two major reasons underlie the inadequacies of the tax framework. On the one hand, “some tax incentives are particularly burdensome and have an exaggerated influence on household savings.” In this context, tax breaks tend to be “the alpha and omega of sales of financial products. Neither prospective returns, nor risks, nor the object of financing are taken into account sufficiently at the time the investment decision is taken,” says Jouyet. Meanwhile, the current structure of tax incentices is extremely piecemeal, and sometimes lacks coherence, “due to a desire to treat every particular case and tax break, and to promote this or that activity, in such a way that each legitimate aim unfortunately leads us into a complex and illegibile framework, in which the real contribution to supporting growth and to long-term investment is difficult to measure,” says Joyet. He therefore calls for a “cleaning up of our savings tax policy, so make it support the growth of our country and returns for savings investors.”
14/05/2012

“We will be a highly active consolidation player”

Sergio Heuer, chairman of the French funds of hedge funds company Olympia for about a year now, discusses the recent merger of the firm which he leads with the US firm Kenman, in an interview with Newsmanagers. He claims that the move comes as part of a necessary movement of consolidation in the alternative multi-management sector, which has also seen a number of other recent deals. This recomposition is not yet completed, says Heuer, and Olympia Kenmar plans to be a key player.
14/05/2012

Hedge fund inflows rebound in April

Investors facing persistent market volatility injected more capital into their hedge funds in April. According to estimates from the fund administrator GlobeOp, net inflows in April represented 1.24% of assets (about USD187bn) in funds monitored by the firm. This amount represents nearly five times the inflows the previous month, which totalled 0.27%, but which remain steeply down compared with positive flows observed in March (2.02%) and February (2.2%), or one year ago (2.41%).
14/05/2012

Inflows to hedge funds of USD2.3bn in March

The hedge fund sector in March posted net inflows of USD2.3bn, compared with USD6.8bn in February, according to statistics from TrimTabs and BarclayHedge. First quarter nonetheless finished with outflows of USD3.2bn. Performance in the quarter totaled 5.6%, compared with gains of 12% for the S&P 500. Some strategies are nonetheless continuing to attract investors, such as macro and fixed income strategies, which has posted significant inflows in the past three years.
14/05/2012

Ignis seeks to demonstrate that govies are profitable

The British asset management firm Ignis Asset Management, still not widely known to French retail clients, has made a name for itself with inflows of EUR400m in one year, to a basic product, a government bond fund entitled Ignis Absolute Return Government Bond Fund, which has gained 7.4% in the 12 months to the end of March (compared with 0.8% for the Eonia), with an information ratio of 2.CIO Chris Fellingham explains to Newsmanagers: “We are adepts of real absolute returns. The Absolute Return Government Bond fund has target volatility of 4% to 6%, but in reality it is below this range, at 3.3%, with a low correlation with other asset classes, including govies. We see it as an alpha product, while most other managers consider absolute returns to come from beta: at the end of the day, those are long beta products.”The CIO goes on to explain the resources deployed to earn such high returns with a product investing in a relatively banal asset class. “We also rely on a cocktail of expertise, with macro analysis, which is indispensable in the govies markets, a quantitative team, and an exclusive piece of software (which is not a “black box”) that we have been developing internally since 2005, entitled ClearCurve. This tool decomposes and deconstructs the interest rate curve, which we have been able to use to generate stable performance gains.” In addition to this, the fund has a low management commission (0.30% for the institutional share class), “which reflects the confidence we have in our performance, since we charge a commission of 10% on performance exceeding the Eonia (with high watermark,)” says Chris Fellingham.
14/05/2012

Elliott heads for ultimatum on Greek debt

The hedge fund management firm Elliott Advisors is planning to require Greece either to repay EUR436m in debts maturing on 15 May, or to declare a default under international debt issuance standards, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. In the former case, Elliott would win out. In the latter case, the asset management firm would seek to reclaim its money in the courts, as it has already done successfully in Peru and Panama in the past.
14/05/2012

BlackRock Germany redeploys distribution resources

After 11 years at Fidelity International Germany, most recently as head of retail banks distribution, Alexander Koch is joining BlackRock, where he will be regional head of distribution of open-ended funds to banks, insurers and IFAs in Hesse, the Palatinate region, and Saarland.Koch replaces Meret Vetter, who will now be in charge of distribution to funds of funds, wealth managers, and family offices.
14/05/2012

Future of asset management at Deutsche Bank remains uncertain

Deutsche Bank and the US firm Guggenheim Partners have failed to reach an agreement for an acquisition for a part of the asset management activities of the former. According to a statement released on 11 May, talks have essentially failed.Exclusive negotiations which began in November last year had dealt largely with the US portion of the asset management firm DWS, asset management activities dedicated to institutionals at DB Advisors, and the insurance firms (Deutsche Insurance Asset Management), These activities were not ultimately of interest to Guggenheim partners, who are reportedly interested only in the alternative management activities at RREEF, specialised in investments in real estate.
14/05/2012

Ratings agencies look again at JPMorgan

The financial ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) on 11 May announced that it is cutting its outlook for the debt rating of JPMorgan Chase, following an announcement by the US bank of a trading loss of USS2bn. Fitch, for its part, has lowered its rating for the US bank. Its long-term debt issuer rating has been lowered to A+ from AA- previously, and the agency has also lowered its solidity rating to A+ from AA-, with a negative outlook on both these ratings.
14/05/2012

TCW reportedly in talks with SocGen about its future

The directors of TCW, an affiliate of SocGen, have begun preliminary talks with their parent company over an acquisition of the firm, Agefi reports, based on reports in Reuters. There is no formal sale process, and an acquisition of TCW by its directors is only one of several possibilities under consideration, one source says. SocGen denies all reports of a planned sale.
14/05/2012

Credit Suisse seeking a new CEO

The board of directors at Credit Suisse is seeking a new CEO to replace Brady Dougan, whose neck is on the chopping block following a slide in the company’s share price, the newspaper Der Sonntag reports. The newspaper reports, citing a top executive at the bank, “that the board of directors is urgently considering” the question of Dougan’s replacement. Shares in Credit Suisse have fallen 57% in the past three years, far more than its competitor UBS, which has lost only 34%. Among the candidates to replace Dougan, the newspaper names Walter Berchtold, a Swiss citizen in charge of wealth management at the bank, and other former senior executives at the bank such as Ulrich Körner, Leonhard Fischer and Hugo Bänziger.
14/05/2012

Deutsche banker creates a CTA fund

Ryo Ishiyama, who until the end of May is a member of the team at Deutsche Securities Inc, in October 2011 founded his own asset management firm in Tokyo, Steinberg Capital Co. He is planning to launch a CTA fund in July, which will use software solutions to invest worldwide in publicly-traded commodity futures, Handelsblatt reports, relaying Bloomberg.The fund will initially have JPY300m in assets (EUR2.9m), of which JPY200m will be contributed by Ishiyama, but the objective is to achieve JPY1bn in the space of one year, with annual returns of about 20%.
14/05/2012

Arden AM appointed to manage transition at Massachusetts pension fund

The New York-based asset management firm Arden Asset Management will help the State of Massachusetts to transfer several hundred million US dollars invested in the portfolios of hedge fund managers. Reuters reports that Arden AM has won a transition manager mandate for the Massachusetts state pension fund, whose assets under management total about USD50bn. Capital invested in funds of funds will be moved to direct investments in a selection of hedge funds. The pension fund has about 10% of its assets invested in hedge funds. Assets under management at Arden AM total about USD6.5bn.
14/05/2012

Fidelity launches two global equity income funds

Fidelity Investments has announced the launch of its first two income funds to focus on international equities (bringing the number of income equity funds in the Fidelity range to 10). The products are the Fidelity Global Equity Income Fund, which is aimed directly at retail investors, and the Fidelity Advisor Global Equity Income Fund, which is available only via financial advisors. The objective for the product, managed by Ramona Persaud, is to outperform the MSCI All Country World index.Management commission is capped to 1.20% for the retail share class, 1.20% for the institutional share class, and 1.45%, 1,70% and 2,20% for Advisor share classes A, T, and C respectively.
14/05/2012

Investors adopt wait-and-see attitude

Tensions in the euro zone in the wake of elections in Greece and France have led investors to adopt a more prudent attitude in early May. Bond funds have posted a record net inflow of USD8bn in the week to 9 May, according to statistics from EPFR Global.Equity funds, however, saw net outflows of USD3.5bn. Emerging market equity funds in particular saw their heaviest outflows since the beginning of the year in the first week of may. US equity funds finished the week to 9 ay with outflows of USd4.78bn, while European equity funds have posted their heaviest outflows since July 2011, due to subscriptions from institutional investors in German equity ETFs. French equity funds, however, saw significant outflows.Money market funds, for their part, have posted subscriptions totalling a net USD12bn.
14/05/2012

Franklin Templeton seeks to grow in Asia

Franklin Templeton Investments is seeking to penetrate retail markets in Malaysia and Vietnam, and to create onshore activites in Taiwan and Indonesia, Asian Investor reports. In 2011, assets at the US asset management firm from Asia-Pacific rose by one fifth, to USD70.7bn. In the first quarter of this year, they have risen further to USD75.8bn.
14/05/2012

Old Mutual assets up in first quarter

As of 31 March, assets in the long-term savings division of Old Mutual, which includes assets managed by Skandia, totalled GBP116.1bn, Fundweb reports. Assets in British-registered funds increased 6% compared with the end of December, to GBP35.6bn, while British platform funds gained 8%, to GBP20.4bn.
14/05/2012

Inflows down at Axa Wealth in first quarter

Net inflows at Axa Wealth, the British arm of the Axa group, totalled GBP845m in first quarter, down 11% compared with first quarter 2011, Fund Web reports. Assets under management as of the end of March 2012 totalled GBP20.1bn, compared with GBP18.6bn in first quarter 2011. Assets on the Architas platform were up 37% in first quarter to USD10.7bn.
14/05/2012

A fund from Skandia IG awards a mandate to BlackRock

Skandia Investment Group’s Skandia European Best Ideas Fund managed by Lee Freeman-Shor has awarded a EUR34m mandate to Richard Plackett of BlackRock. The move to bring in Placket coincides with the 4th anniversary of the EUR340m fund.
14/05/2012

Cheyne launches two UCITS IV funds

Cheyne Capital Management has announced the launch of two UCITS IV compliant funds: the Cheyne Global Credit Fund and the Cheyne European Real Estate Bond Fund. Their investment portfolios are based on those of two existing flagship Cheyne strategies.The Cheyne Global Credit Fund is an actively managed, directional UCITS IV compliant fund offering weekly liquidity. It positions investment grade and crossover credit, primarily in North America and Europe, where the team believes credit spreads are currently pricing in too much downside given the very robust fundamentals of most corporate balance sheets. Cheyne’s corporate credit team manages net assets of USD1.3 billion. The Cheyne Real Estate Bond Fund is a UCITS IV compliant fund focusing on high quality real estate-backed bonds offering weekly liquidity. Cheyne’s real estate debt team has also net assets under management of USD1.3 billion. The team has identified a compelling investment opportunity arising from the structural dislocation in Europe’s EUR1.4 trillion real estate debt market, offering attractive yields with strong downside protection.
14/05/2012

Des hedge funds attendent JP Morgan au tournant

Jamie Dimon, le PDG de JPMorgan, a dû expliquer en fin de semaine dernière comment sa banque a pu perdre 2 milliards de dollars dans des opérations de couverture sur le marché des CDS, tout en restant très flou sur la nature des positions prises, rapporte L’Agefi. Des pertes aussi énormes pour des positions censées en couvrir d’autres éveillent des soupçons sur la nature purement spéculative de l’activité. D’autant que la facture gonflera encore de «un milliard de dollars ou plus» d’ici à fin juin ou au troisième trimestre, précise le quotidien. Attendue au tournant par plusieurs hedge funds -BlueMountain et Blue Crest auraient gagné de l’argent dans l’affaire - la banque ne peut pas liquider d’un coup ses positions.
14/05/2012

Trois promotions chez Edmond de Rothschild Capital Partners

Edmond de Rothschild Capital Partners vient d’annoncer trois promotions au sein de ses équipes. Paul Barry est nommé directeur de Participations, Marie Londero est nommée chargée d’affaires et Jean-David Maillard est nommé secrétaire général adjoint. Paul Barry, 34 ans, a rejoint Edmond de Rothschild Capital Partners en 2009 comme directeur d’investissement. De son côté, Marie Londero, 26 ans, a commencé sa carrière chez Edmond de Rothschild Capital Partners en 2010 en tant qu’analyste. Enfin, Jean-David Maillard, 30 ans, a rejoint Edmond de Rothschild Capital Partners en 2008, en tant que chargé d’affaires Juridiques et Financières.
14/05/2012

Natixis augmente son poids dans le capital de Vivendi

Natixis agissant pour compte propre, a déclaré avoir franchi en hausse, le 7 mai 2012, les seuils de 5% du capital et des droits de vote de la société Vivendi. Elle détient 65.020.613 actions représentant autant de droits de vote, soit 5,21% du capital et des droits de vote de cette société.Ce franchissement de seuils résulte d’une acquisition d’actions Vivendi sur le marché et hors marché.
14/05/2012
Fonds

Fidelity lance deux fonds actions mondiales de rendement

Fidelity Investments a annoncé le lancement de ses deux premiers fonds de rendement à se focaliser sur les actions internationales (cela porte à 10 le nombre des fonds de rendement actions de la gamme Fidelity). Il s’agit du Fidelity Global Equity Income Fund qui s’adresse directement aux particuliers et du Fidelity Advisor Global Equity Income Fund accessible uniquement au travers de conseillers financiers. L’objectif de ces produits gérés par Ramona Persaud est de surperformer l’indice MSCI All Country World.La commission ds gestion est plafonnée à 1,20 % pour la classe de parts retail, à 1,20 % pour les parts institutionnelles et à 1,45%, 1,70 % et 2,20 % pour les parts «advisors» A, T et C, respectivement.
Fonds
14/05/2012
Fonds

Arden AM manager de transition pour le fonds de pension du Massachusetts

La société de gestion basée à New York Arden Asset Management va aider l’Etat du Massachusetts à transférer des centaines de millions de dollars dans les portefeuilles de gérants de hedge funds.Selon Reuters, Arden AM a remporté un mandat de gestionnaire de transition pour le compte du fonds de pension de l’Etat du Massachusetts, dont les actifs sous gestion s'élèvent à environ 50 milliards de dollars. Il s’agit de sortir des capitaux investis dans des fonds de fonds pour investir en direct dans une sélection de hedge funds. Le fonds de pension investit environ 10% de ses actifs dans des hedge funds.Les actifs sous gestion d’Arden AM s'élèvent à environ 6,5 milliards de dollars.
Fonds
14/05/2012

TCW discuterait avec SocGen de son avenir

Des dirigeants de TCW, filiale de SocGen, ont entamé des discussions préliminaires avec leur maison mère en vue d’un rachat de la société, rapporte L’Agefi qui s’appuie sur une information de Reuters. Il n’y a pas de processus formel de cession et le rachat de TCW par ses dirigeants n’est qu’une des nombreuses options envisagées, a précisé l’une des sources. La Société Générale a démenti tout projet de cession.
14/05/2012

"Nous serons un acteur très actif de la consolidation"

Sergio Heuer, le président d’Olympia depuis environ un an, revient dans un entretien à Newsmanagers sur la fusion récente de la société qu’il dirige avec l’américain Kenmar. Selon lui, cela s’inscrit dans un mouvement nécessaire de concentration du secteur de la multigestion alternative, marqué d’ailleurs récemment par plusieurs opérations. Cette recomposition n’est pas encore terminée, selon Sergio Heuer, et Olympia Kenmar compte bien en être un acteur clé.
14/05/2012
Fonds

Les hedge funds ont collecté 2,3 milliards de dollars en mars

Le secteur des hedge funds a enregistré en mars une collecte nette de 2,3 milliards de dollars, contre 6,8 milliards de dollars en février, selon des statistiques communiquées par TrimTabs et BarclayHedge.Le premier trimestre s’est néanmoins terminé sur une décollecte de 3,2 milliards de dollars. La performance du trimestre s’est élevée à 5,6%, à comparer à un bond de 12% pour le S&P 500.Certaines stratégies continuent toutefois d’attirer les investisseurs, notamment les stratégies macro et fixed income qui affichent des collectes significatives sur les trois dernières années.
Fonds

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