Si l'Italie et l'Espagne souffrent, la France et les autres pays de la zone euro voient leurs rendements s'écarter vis-à-vis de l'Allemagne

La banque helvète espère dégager 200 millions de francs d’économies en année pleine. Environ 550 postes seront supprimés dans le groupe

Tiré par l'Allemagne, le PIB de la zone a progressé de 0,2 % au troisième trimestre. Mais il se contractera à la fin de l'année, même dans les pays cœur

Des désaccords au sein de la Commission l’obligent à « différer » certaines mesures

Les détenteurs de dette grecque ayant accepté une décote de 50% sur la valeur faciale de leurs actifs seraient à la recherche de rendements plus élevés ainsi que d’un paiement annuel incitatif dans le cas où l’économie grecque connaitrait une reprise, selon le quotidien qui cite une proposition faite dimanche dernier aux autorités grecques. Ils insistent également sur le fait que ces mesures doivent être régies par la loi britannique et non grecque.

Des désaccords au sein de la Commission l’obligent à « différer » certaines mesures

Même si les taux de défaut demeurent raisonnables, l’augmentation du chômage pourrait peser sur la performance des transactions

La ville de Shanghai a émis hier 3,6 milliards de yuans d’obligations à 3 ans, et 3,5 milliards à 5 ans au taux de 3,30 %. Une première

L’encours des fonds a progressé de 0,6 % en octobre à 732,6 milliards d’euros, en dépit d’une décollecte de 7,2 milliards

La zone euro a enregistré une croissance modeste de 0,2% au troisième trimestre par rapport aux trois mois précédents, selon les chiffres publiés mardi par Eurostat, tirée par la France et l’Allemagne, mais la décélération des exportations et la stagnation de la consommation augurent d’une contraction sous peu. En rythme annuel, le PIB des 17 pays utilisant la monnaie unique européenne est ressorti à 1,4%, soutenue notamment par une production industrielle étonnamment solide en août. L'économie allemande a enregistré une croissance de 0,5% sur la période de juin à septembre, conforme aux attentes des économistes, tandis que celle du deuxième trimestre a été révisée en hausse à +0,3% contre +0,1% précédemment. Le produit intérieur brut de la France a progressé de 0,4% sur la même période après une contraction de 0,1% au deuxième trimestre. Les deux principales économies de la zone euro vont cependant être rattrapées par la crise de la dette souveraine, préviennent des économistes. Par ailleurs, si la contraction du PIB grec (-5,2% en rythme annuel) était largement attendue, celle des Pays-Bas (-0,3% ) constitue une mauvaise surprise.

La balance commerciale est revenue dans le vert en septembre et ce de manière plus franche que prévu, selon les chiffres d’Eurostat. L’excédent commercial de ce mois ressort ainsi à 2,9 milliards d’euros, contre un consensus des économistes de 0,3 milliard. Pour le mois d’août, le déficit a été révisé à 4,4 milliards contre -3,4 milliards il y a un an.

Le différentiel de rendement entre les emprunts d’Etat à 10 ans français et allemands a atteint mardi midi un nouveau record, à 183 pb, en raison de la tension du rendement de l’OAT 10 ans à 3,58%. A l’exception du Bund et des emprunts nordiques et britanniques, les taux européens décalent nettement à la hausse. Ceux de l’Italie ont repassé la barre des 7% à 10 ans (+33 pb), et ceux de l’Espagne se traitent à 6,28% (+17 pb), dans la foulée des tensions de la veille, notamment liées à la faiblesse des rachats de dette par la BCE. Ce climat a d’ailleurs forcé mardi le Trésor espagnol à consentir un rendement supérieur à 5% pour émettre 3,16 milliards d’euros de bons à 12 et 18 mois alors qu’il était inférieur à 4% lors des dernières opérations du même type.

Le président de Prigest SA a sa réponse. Dans un courrier envoyé par un conseil de la société Dexia SA et daté du 9 novembre, l’établissement franco-belge est revenu sur les lettres - au nombre de six - que Christian Cambier a envoyé à Pierre Mariani, administrateur délégué de l'établissement franco-belge et qui reprenaient, entre autres, les fautes et les manquements du management (lire Newsmanagers du 21/10/2011). Dans sa réponse, Dexia SA se dit société anonyme de droit belge obéissant de fait en matière d’obligations d’informations au droit belge et non français. De fait, tandis que Christian Cambier l’avait demandé, «aucune des opérations envisagées par Dexia SA ne requiert en droit belge la tenue d’une assemblée générale des actionnaires». En outre, alors que le président de Prigest SA avait aussi abordé la question d’un possible délit d’initié, l’établissement a notamment indiqué que c’est la FSMA, le régulateur belge, qui est responsable du contrôle du respect de la règlementation en matière d’abus de marché et de délit d’initié. Pour ce qui la concerne, «Dexia se conforme à ses obligations en la matière». Pour conclure, l'établissement rappelle également qu’il n’est pas impliquée ni directement, ni indirectement dans d’éventuels accords ou arrangements particuliers entre les Etats belge ou français et certains actionnaires de référence. Dexia SA ajoute n’avoir connaissance d’aucun arrangement de ce type. Enfin, la société invite Christian Cambier à s’enquérir auprès de certains actionnaires tels que la Caisse des dépôts et consignations de leurs intentions, n’étant pas davantage informée sur ce sujet.

L’allemand Deka Immobilien indique avoir revendu «avec un bénéfice», l’actif logistique Myren 6 & 8 (15.000 mètres carrés) situé à Huddinge près de Stockholm*. Cet ensemble loué en totalité à Posten Sverige AB et il a été acheté pour environ 35 millions d’euros par le gestionnaire britannique Rockspring Property Investment Managers.Le Myren 6 & 8 avait été acheté en 2004 pour un fonds immobilier institutionnel de Deka.

Henderson Global Investors s’est associé à Sesame Bankhall Group pour lancer une société d’investissement appelée Optimum Investment Management Limited, selon Investment Week. Cette coentreprise offrira aux conseillers un accès à une solution d’investissement gérée par l’équipe de multigestion d’Henderson.

Le britannique Legal & General aurait approché la plate-forme Cofunds avec l’objectif de racheter l’activité dans laquelle il détient déjà une participation de 25%, rapporte le Sunday Telegraph daté du 13 novembre.La société de capital investissement Bridgepoint aurait également manifesté son intérêt avant même l’initiative prise par Legal & General. Outre Legal & General, l’actionnariat de Cofunds comprend le fournisseur de technologies IFDS (24%), l’investisseur américain Newhouse Capital (18%), les britanniques Threadneedle et Jupiter (respectivement 20% et 10%) et Prudential (3%). Lundi après-midi, Cofunds a démenti vouloir céder son activité.

Pimco on 14 November announced the launch of the Pimco GIS Credit Absolute Return fund, aimed at investors seeking a diversified strategy focused on absolute returns with no benchmark. The fund has an “all-terrain” investment style, has considerable freedom in terms of the financial instruments to be integrated into its portfolio, and is managed by Mark Kiesel, Managing Director and Head of corporate debt portfolios. The fund combines long-term strategic investments and more short-term tactical opportunities in order to offer positive returns regardless of the market environment. It is designed to allow investors to diversify their bond portfolio without exposing themselves to risks that Pimco estimates are inherent to indices. The fund will be based on the expertise of Pimco in the area of credit, its proven investment process, research capacity and risk management techniques, in order to offer a strategy focused on absolute returns to investors seeking alternatives to long-only traditional funds. “The Pimco investment process orients our macroeconomic scenario, and allows us to identify risk factors in various bond markets,” says Kiesel. “We complement this top-down approach with a rigorous bottom-up analysis which aims to obtain the best long and short positions in each segment of the bond market: investment grade credit, high yield bonds, emerging market credit, bank loans, and municipal and convertible bonds.” The fund comes as an addition to the Global Investor Series (GIS) from Pimco, which complies with UCITS regulations. The range, registered in Dublin, now has 45 sub-funds, representing EUR57bn in asstes under management as of 30 June 2011. In addition to daily liquidity, the funds offer investors a way to expose their portfolios to a wide range of asset classes, ranging from global and regional traditional bond funds, to credit portfolios, to alternative and asset allocation solutions. The funds are available in several share classes denominated in several currencies, depending on the needs of the client. Institutional share classes in the funds will be available for sale under the ticker code PIMCIUA.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc, the portfolio company for Warren Buffett, on 14 November announced that it has acquired 5.4% of International Business Machines Corp (IBM), for a total of USD10.7bn, the Wall Street Journal reports.The investment at current market prices represents USD12bn, thus Berkshire Hathaway has already made gains of 12%. After State Street, Berkshire Hathaway was the second-largest shareholder in IBM as of 30 September. The buyer had begun to amass shares since March, twice receiving confidential treatment from the SEC.Since the beginning of this year, the share price for IBM has increased by 28%, while the S&P 500 index was flat. With an investment in IBM, Buffett breaks with his longstanding aversion to the technology sector.

Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global, and Axa Real Estate Investment Managers, acting on behalf of Axa France Insurance Companies, has announced that their Paris office joint venture partnership has exchanged contracts to acquire by the end of the year a portfolio of prime Paris offices for EUR290 million (excluding transfer taxes), reflecting a passing cap rate of 6.0%. This second acquisition by the JV has been negotiated off market and comprises three office properties, with some retail units on ground floors: two in Paris and one in Boulogne-Billancourt, in the Western Business District of Paris. The details of the assets are as follows: 28 – 32 Victor Hugo – Paris 16 – A prime office asset located in the heart of the Paris central business district in the immediate vicinity of Place de l’Etoile. It has a total GLA of approximately 9,500 sqm, of which 900 sqm of retail, arranged over five basement levels, a ground floor and seven upper levels. The property is fully let. 99 Avenue de France – Paris 13 – Located in the Rive Gauche business area in the 13th district of Paris, the asset has a total GLA of approximately 14,300 sqm, of which 4,600 sqm of retail, arranged over two basement levels, a ground floor and eight upper levels. It is fully let. Le Prélude – Boulogne-Billancourt – A headquarter office building located within Boulogne-Billancourt, in the established Western Business District of Paris. It has a total GLA of approximately 8,200 sqm arranged over three basement levels, a ground floor and six upper levels. It is fully let to a single strong covenant tenant. The JV between Norges Bank and Axa Real Estate was launched in August 2011 to target co-investment opportunities in the Paris office market.

NewAlpha Asset Management, an affiliate of IFO AM specialised in the incubation of management firms in the inception phase, has signed its seventeenth incubation partnership with the Heieck Siebrecht Capital Advisors company, via an investment of USD40m in the asset manager’s flagship fund. HSCA AG, based in Zurich, is an independent company founded in 2009 by Frank Siebrecht and Stefan Heieck. Siebrecht and Heieck had a total of over 26 years of experience in German and European equities. Siebrecht was an equities analyst at Deutsche Bank for 9 years, before spending three years at Absolute Capital Management, where he was co-manager of the Absolute Capital Germany fund. Heieck was in equity sales at DG Financial Markets, and then at ManFirst Capital, before joining Absolute Capital Management to co-manage Absolute Capital Germany. Heieck Siebrecht Capital Advisors uses an absolute return strategy on European equities with a particular focus on German, Swiss and Austrian large and midcaps. HSCA also includes in its investment universe European rivals to their German counterparts.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) has announced the appointment of Carol Baldwin Moody as senior portfolio manager for investment compliance and operational risk. As the head of CalPERS new Investment Compliance function, she will be responsible for developing, implementing and monitoring investment management compliance and operational risk programs and policies. Moody comes to CalPERS from Wilmington Trust, where she was senior vice president and chief risk officer.

The US investment firm Evercore Partners Inc has bought a 45% stake in Evercore Investment Management LLC (24 employtees, USD3.5bn in assets) for about USD45m in cash. The transaction will be closed by the end of the year.The founders and employees of the firm will retain the remaining 55%. Alain De Coster, Laurence Russian and Guilherme Ribeiro do Valle, the founders, will remain as heads of ABS IM, and will sign long-term employment contracts. They will invest a large part of the proceeds of the sale in products managed by ABS.

The French entrepreneurial asset management firm IT Asset Management (about EUR150m in assets) has recruited Ines Thibault as head of sales for France. She had previously been head of sales at Algofi.Pierre Nicolle, an intern sales assistant, has been recruited as a salesperson for France. He joined the asset management firm in December 2009, after being responsible for development of major accounts at a finance specialist IT services company. He will be in charge of monitoring and distribution of funds in France to institutional clients and independent financial advisers.IT Asset Management is also adding to its sales drive in Europe, with the registration of the IT Funds Info Tech fund in Spain, and a new sales partner in the United Kingdom, Gemini Investment Management.

At the end of last month, assets under management by Legg Mason totalled USD628.7bn, compared with USD611.8bn as of 30 September. This level remains well below USD662.5bn at the end of June, and USD671.8bn as of 31 December 2010.Among its long-term assets, the equity allocation increased to USD159.4bn as of the end of October, from USD144.9bn at the end of September (it totalled USD184.2bn as of the end of last year), while bond products totalled USD359bn as of 31 October, compared with USD355.5bn one month previously, and USd355.8bn as of 31 December 2010.Assets in money market funds were down to USD110bn, from USD111.4bn as of 30 September. As of the end of 2010, these asstes totalled USD131.8bn.

Overall, open-ended funds in Germany, excluding real estate funds, have seen net outflows of EUR8.43bn in January-September, the German BVI association of asset management firms reports.Aside from Allianz Global Investors, which has taken on EUR1.49bn due to net subscriptions of EUR5.73bn at its affiliate Pimco Europe, all the major asset management firms have seen net outflows in the first three quarters of the year: redemptions have totalled EUR7.53bn for Deka (savings banks), EUR3.54bn for the DWS/DB Advisors/DB family (Deutsche Bank), and EUR1.52bn for Union Investment (co-operative banks).ETF promoters, excepting ETFlab (Deka), which has seen net outflows of EUR1.09bn, have posted net subscriptions, including BlackRock (for its iShares products), which have attracted over UER7.55bn, db x-trackers (Deutsche Bank), with EUR1.3bn, and ComStage (Commerzbank) with EUR279m.Open-ended funds overall saw net outflows of EUR2.77bn, which brings net outflows to EUR3.94bn in third quarter, and EUR7.55bn in the first nine months of the year. In the first three quarters of 2010, these funds attracted a further EUR18.91bn.German asset management overall has seen net subscriptions of EUR10.75bn in January-September, thanks to EUR20.08bn in inflows to institutional funds. These last two figures compare with EUR83.41bn and EUR42.93bn, respectively.Mandates managed outside funds, which represented EUR278.18bn as of the end of September, posted net inflows in the first nine months of the year of EUR1.79bn, despite net inflows of EUR1.85bn in September.

The average number of on-book trades on ETFs on European markets of NYSE Euronext in October fell to 11,250, from 13,070 in September, and 14,658 in August. In the first ten months of the year, the rate of increase has slowed to 26.1%, from 26.6% in January-September.The average on-book daily trading volume came to EUR433.8m last month, compared with EUR558m in September, and EUR618.2m in August. In January-October, the annual increase came to 32%.The European listings on NYSE Euronext as of the end of October included 593 ETF funds listed a total of 691 times. Since the beginning of this year, there have been 153 fund launches, of which 125 were primary listings, and 28 were secondary listings. In October, 14 ETFs were newly added to trading, of which 6 were from SPDR (SSgA), 5 from RBS Market Access, and 3 from Lyxor Asset Management (Société Générale).The average spread for all ETFs in October totalled 36.3 basis points, compared with 38.83 in September, and 28.5 in August.

The first ETF to replicate the performance of social media companies will be launched this Tuesday in the United States, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Global X Social Media ETF, from the Global X Funds company, will track 25 companies. It will have a strong exposure to Chinese internet companies.

The British asset management firm Legal & General has approached the Cofunds platform with an offer to acquire the activity, in which it already holds a 25% stake, the Sunday Telegraph reports in its 13 November issue. The private equity firm Bridgepoint is also reported to have expressed an interest even before Legal & General made its bid. In addition to Legal & General, the Cofunds shareholders include the IT provider IFDS (24%) th US investment firm Newhouse Capital (18%), the British firms Threadneedle and Jupiter (20% and 10%, respectively), and Prudential (3%). On Monday afternoon, Cofunds denied that it planned to sell the activity.

Henderson Global Investors has teamed up with Sesame Bankhall Group to launch an investment company entitled Optimum Investment Management Limited, Investment Week reports. The joint venture will offer advisers access to an investment solution managed by the multi-management team at Henderson.

The commodities investment pioneer Jim Rogers is now taking a tour of Australia to find investors interested in a project to raise AUD350m (EUR262m) for investments to focus on agricultural land in the northern part of New South Wales, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports.The concept is based on predictions that inflation will increase and demand for agricultural products from Asia will provoke a rise in the price of investments of this type. The farmers will be maintained in charge of their operations.The new fund advised by Rogers will be known as Laguna Bay Pastoral Company. Laguna Bay as the support of the investment bank Morgan Stanley.