Hervé Letoublon rejoint Avenir Finance Gestion en qualité de directeur de participations.Il était précédemment chez Rhône-Alpes Création en tant que directeur d"investissements.

Selon L"Agefi suisse, la Confédération ne veut pas mettre fin à ses «bonnes vieilles habitudes» en matière de secret bancaire mais elle semble prête à accepter certains aménagements. Pierre Mirabaud. Le président de l"Association suisse des banquiers, Pierre Mirabaud, a reconnu pour la première fois qu"il n"est peut-être «pas nécessaire» de faire une distinction entre fraude fiscale et évasion fiscale. Le déclic qui semble avoir poussé les responsables suisses à pencher vers un compromis est la menace des pays les plus riches d"inscrire la Confédération sur la liste noire des paradis fiscaux lors de la réunion des pays du G20 qui se tiendra le 2 avril à Londres.

La Financial Services Authority (FSA) a annoncé mardi qu’elle avant au 1er juin l’entrée en vigueur de la nouvelle réglementation sur la déclaration des CFD qui était initialement prévue pour le 1er septembre. Les CFD et les instruments financiers similaires concernant une même société devront être déclarés comme les actions et seront pris en compte pour le franchissement du seuil des 3 %. Cela devrait garantir qu’ils ne seront pas utilisés subrepticement pour influencer la gouvernance ou pour gonfler des participations dans les entreprises.

Dans un entretien à L"Agefi suisse, Cédric Tille, professeur en macroéconomie à l"Institut de hautes études internationales et du développement, estime que «la Suisse doit faire des concessions. La distinction entre évasion et fraude fiscale est difficile à justifier auprès de nos partenaires». Un seul point ne semble pas négociable: la protection des noms des clients, qui fait la réputation de la place financière. Pour le reste, la Suisse pourrait reverser plus d"argent aux Etats-Unis et à l"Union européenne. A l"heure actuelle, les banques cèdent 25% du rendement sur le capital aux autorités fiscales étrangères. «Une option de négociation serait d"étendre cette contribution, par exemple en imposant la fortune», propose Cédric Tille. Mais de telles concessions devront s"accompagner de contreparties. «Il faut maintenant chercher un accord global avec l"Union européenne et les Etats-Unis qui redéfinisse les règles du jeu», selon Cédric Tille.

La Commission luxembourgeoise de surveillance du secteur financier (CSSF) a décidé, le 27 février dernier, de retirer la Sicav Luxembourg Investment Fund, exposée à Bernard Madoff, de la liste officielle des organismes de placement collectif, et de demander sa liquidation judiciaire. Cela s’inscrit «dans le cadre de l"établissement des responsabilités des différents intervenants en relation avec Luxembourg Investment Fund et sa banque dépositaire UBS (Luxembourg) S.A. et afin de sauvegarder au mieux les droits des investisseurs», précise le communiqué.

Renaissance Technologies (USD20bn in assets) on Tuesday announced the recruitment of Matthew H. Scanlan as president and CEO of its affiliate Renaissance Institutional Management. Scanlan was previously managing director and head of the Americas institutional business at Barclays Global Investors. He replaces Stephen Robert, who retired at the end of last year. Pensions & Investments reports that Scanlan will be replaced in the interim at BGI by William Chinery, managing director and head of client service for the group’s activities in the Americas.

The extraordinary audit of the Banif Inmobiliario fund from Santander Real Estate has resulted in a downward revision of the value of the portfolio of 7.5%, lower than market expectations, Expansión reports. The newspaper adds that 97% of subscribers to the fund have requested redemption of their shares. The Banif Inmobiliario will distribute redemptions (between 9 March and 5 May) to investors in a first group equivalent to 10.3% of the audited value of the fund. Santander will then deliver subsequent redemptions to investors in 10% stages as properties are sold off, as a function of the net asset value of the fund.

Henderson Global Investors, led since the end of last year by its former CIO, Andrew Formica, follows a policy of actively adapting its product range to market conditions. Recently, the British management firm announced that it will be closing two sub-funds of its Horizon Sicav, including the Pan European Property Equities Alpha Plus Fund (EUR0.8bn), which was tactically positioned to enter at the low point of the market and profit from a rebound in real estate properties, which the market will apparently not deliver in the next few months.Similarly, the Global Financials Fund sub-fund was launched in late 2007, and was tactically aligned to the bottom of the market, and oriented to the recovery of financial sector shares. The fund will be closed on 1 June. It was not intensively promoted, and its assets as of the end of January totalled EUR2m, says Patricial Kaveh, director of development for France, Geneva and Monaco.The Strategic Yield Fund (EUR4m), for its part, has been reoriented to Europe, whereas it was previously focused on global and United States investments. Its high yield positioning is not meeting market expectations; the fund will therefore be closed.This housekeeping in the product range will also bring reorientations. For example, the Henderson Horizon Pan European Alpha Plus will on 1 April become the Pan European Alpha. The management team has recently been changed, and ?Plus? was let go as part of cost-saving measures. The product, which was a multi-strategy fund, will become a ?fundamental? product. The long/short sub-fund (30 long positions, 10-20 short positions), delivering portable alpha in a UCITS-III compliant vehicle, will be highly flexible, says Kaveh.The London offices of Henderson have also announced the launch of an offshore Luxembourg version of its Industries of the Future fund, which is not yet licensed for sale in France. The product, managed by Tim Dieppe, is intended for European and Asian investors.

In asset management, total assets under management at Crédit Agricole came to EUR457.5bn as of 31 December 2008, compared with EUR525bn one year earlier. That puts them 12.9% lower than 12 months earlier; 8.5 points of this decline are due to falling valuations. ?Outflows in the period are limited to 4.4% of assets, thanks to strong inflows to money market products (+EUR18.3bn), guaranteed products (+EUR4.9bn), and employee savings, which partially compensate for disaffection from absolute performance and alternative products (-EUR26.8bn), and equities products (-EUR9.2bn),? the bank says in a statement. In total, net redemptions totalled EUR23bn for the year.The asset management unit will soon be merged with Société Générale.

After reorganizing its fixed-income management, Axa Investment Managers is now taking on ?qualitative? equities management. The management firm of the Axa group has recently concluded the merger of the Conviction Actions, Axa Framlington and Talents teams, which manage assets of EUR63bn, out of a total of EUR120bn in equities management overall; the remainder is at Axa Rosenberg, the quantitative equities management arm. The merger will involve the creation of a single brand name for qualitative equities management. The product range will be reorganized around two major areas: ?core? funds and ?specialised? funds (thematic funds, absolute return, etc). This means that some products will be merged, but others will also be created, when lacunae are identified, which will offer ?more complete and coherent? product range, says Nathalie Boullefort-Fulconis, global director of Axa IM Distribution. The new range will be unveiled in one month.Equities management represented 24% of assets at Axa IM at the end of 2008, which total EUR485bn, At the end of 2007 they represented 31% of total assets of EUR548bn.In addition to this project, begun in 2008, Axa IM has set three priorities in 2009, a year which will be ?more difficult than 2008, with the impact of the markets playing a major role,? says the firm’s CEO, Dominique Carrel-Billiard.One of these, unsurprisingly, will be cost reduction in a context of falling revenues. Among its other priorities, Axa IM is also planning to improve its risk management, with an investment of EUR9bn, and to work on client relations.In an environment in which acquisition opportunties are numerous, Axa IM says it is also ?always ready to make a small targeted acquisition? in areas where it is not already present. The firm has already considered 4 or 5 possible candidates which have been submitted to them since the beginning of the year.

Liongate Capital Management has announced the opening of its fund of hedge funds Liongate Commodities Fund to outside investors, Hedge Week reports. The product, which began in January 2008 with seed capital of USD40m, is now invested in 20 mid-sized hedge funds specialised in various commodities (precious metals, oil, sugar). In the 13 months to the end of January 2009, it has posted performance of 0.36% in US dollars, compared with a loss of 51.27% for the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index.

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) announced on Tuesday that it is moving up the date on which its new disclosure regime for contracts for difference (CFDs) will take effect to 1 June, rather than the previously announced date of 1 September. Under the new regime, CFDs and similar financial instruments in the same company will be required to be declared as equities, and will count towards the 3% declaration threshold. This will ensure that these instruments are not covertly used to influence the governance of businesses or to build up stakes in companies.

At the end of January, assets in funds domiciled in the United Kingdom totalled GBP354.2bn, compared with GBP361.1bn at the end of December, and GBP432.2bn twelve months previously, while total net subscriptions represented GBP1.85bn, compared with GBP1.92bn the previous month, and with net redemptions of GBP744.3m in January 2008, the Investment Management Association (IMA) reports. Of this total, retail net subscriptions represented EUR1.22bn, compared with EUR1.50bn in December, and net outflows of EUR561.3m.For funds domiciled abroad, assets as of 31 January totalled GBP15.2bn, compared with GBP16bn at the end of December and GBP16.2bn one year previously, while net subscriptions in January totalled GBP66.6m, compared with GBP180.6m the previous month, and net redemptions of GBP374.8m in January 2008. Richard Saunders, chief executive at the IMA, points out that subscriptions have been high in the past three months, particularly for bond funds in December and January.

US lawyers preparing the case against Bernard Madoff have detected possible conflicts of interest concerning his lawyer, Ira Sorkin, the Financial Times reports. In 1992, Sorkin represented an accountancy firm which had invested in Madoff. Sorkin’s father, now deceased, had a retirement savings account with Madoff.

2008 was a hard year for investors in clean energies, but the election of president Obama in the United States and his declared intention to facilitate the development of clean energies during his term in office have recently given a boost to ?Clean Tech.?Henderson Global Investors (HGI) nonetheless estimates, however, that it is still too soon to declare a recovery in the Clean Tech sector, and remains cautious in the short term. But there are opportunities to be had in clean energies, the management firm says. ?The largest companies, for example, have outperformed the market since October 2008, and come shares, such as the Japanese battery maker GS Yuasa, have posted record performances,? says Seb Beloe, director or SRI research. He points out that the sector still needs to surmount a number of difficulties, such as financing. There may be some improvement in 2009, ?particularly if negotiations succeed in producing an international agreement, but it remains likely that growth will not really return until 2010,? he says. This means 2009 will be an eventful year in Clean Tech, says HGI.

The LGT Bank of Liechtenstein has announced the recruitment for its private banking activities in Frankfurt of a team of five client advisors from Dresdner Bank, who have longstanding relationships with high net worth private clients in the Frankfurt-Mainz-Bad Homburg triangle, the Börsen-Zeitung reports. The team is led by Andreas Bluck, who becomes the number two ranking member of the LGT-Bank branch in Frankfurt.

Following the announcement of USD1.1bn losses for the past fiscal year, the deteriorating economic environment may lead KKR to call off plans to become a publicly traded company through the takeover of KKR Private Equity Investors (KPE), listed in Amsterdam, Les Echos reports. KKR floated its KPE fund, specialised in leveraged buyouts, on the Amsterdam stock exchange in May 2006.

The Edhec Risk and Asset Management Research Centre has announced the creation of a chair for research on active-passive management and sovereign funds («ALM and Sovereign Wealth Fund Management»), in partnership with Deutsche Bank, which will be overseen by Lionel Martellini, scientific director of the EDHEC Risk and Asset Management Research Centre.The research chair will be responsible for the following developments: the introduction of a formal asset allocation model, which will incorporate the most important factors in the management of sovereign funds; empirical analysis of risk factors that impact cash flows in and out of sovereign funds; conception of dedicated solutions for sovereign funds based on financial engineering with the goal of facilitating the establishment of coverage requirements for sovereign funds relative to the presence of a variety of risk factors.

Hervé Letoublon is joining Avenir Finance Gestion as director of participations.He was previously at Rhône-Alpes Création, where he was director of investments.

Allianz Global Investors (AGI) has announced operating profits of EUR904m in 2008, compared with profits of EUR1.32bn in 2007 (-32%), while net profits have contracted by EUR101m, or 21.5%, to EUR369m, on assets down by EUR50bn or 5.2% to EUR920bn, while assets under management for third parties have fallen by EUR52bn, or 7.1%, to EUR673bn.

Euroclear has announced that it has signed a partnership with ten major management firms (AllianceBernstein, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Invesco, JPMorgan Asset Management, Pictet Asset Management, Pioneer Investments, Robeco Asset Management, Schroders Investment Management, Société Générale Asset Management and Virmont SARL, formerly known as Alken Asset Management), to offer incentives to promote a transition to automatic transactions at the 50% of distributors who are not yet using the STP FundSettle transaction processing and settlement system from Euroclear. A wholly electronic transaction processing system for funds would save the asset management sector about EUR300m per year, Euroclear estimates.All asset servicing and custody activities will be free for new distributors who sign up for FundSettle. Fund distributors who use the STP FundService system from FundSettle pay EUR0.75 per transaction for routing and settlement of a buy or sell order, compared with an average commission of EUR7 by other means. In addition, distributors can rationalise their back-office by using FundSettle as a unique access point, and would reduce their risk levels through the automatisation of these processes.

In January, for the first time in a long time, the specialised investment fund and collective investment organism sector in Luxembourg has posted an increase in total asset levels totalling EUR11.881bn for the month. EUR8.423bn of this increase was due to the positive impact of financial markets, and EUR3.458bn came from net subscriptions.As of 31 January, assets totalled EUR1.571534trn, an increase of 0.76% since 31 December 2008. But over twelve months, asset volumes are down 19.46%.

The Luxembourg financial sector surveillance commission (CSSF) decided on 27 February to withdraw the Luxembourg Investment Fund Sicav, which was exposed to Bernard Madoff, from the official list of collective investment organisms, and to order its legal liquidation. The move is part of an effort ?to establish the responsibilities of the various actors in relation to the Luxembourg Investment Fund and its depository bank, UBS (Luxembourg) S.A., and to better safeguard the rights of investors,? says a statement.

The Börsen-Zeitung reports that, as a result of the turbulence on the financial markets, assets in the ETF from db x-trackers (Deutsche Bank) based on the Eonia have reached EUR6.3bn. The issuer says the product has become the largest ETF in Europe.

Récemment dévoilé, le dispositif britannique de couverture des actifs toxiques cherche à renouveler le flux des actifs disponibles à la titrisation

La première examine la possibilité d'actions non conventionnelles. La seconde va racheter des titres

L’International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN), qui est composé d’investisseurs institutionnels pesant 9,5 billions de dollars, a publié selon Professional Pensions un appel aux actionnaires pour qu’ils s’assurent que les entreprises dans lesquelles ils investissent ont effectivement mis en place les mesures préventives et répressives pour combattre la corruption. Dans ce document, assorti d’une check-list, l’ICGN recommande aussi aux investisseurs de s’assurer qu’ils ont eux-mêmes mis en place dans leur propre organisation les mesures de contrôle correspondantes.

Selon Le Temps, l"île de Man a signé, lundi à Berlin, un accord bilatéral «pour l"échange de renseignement à des fins fiscales». L"accord confirme l"engagement des deux parties à parvenir à une concurrence fiscale loyale et à appliquer les principes de transparence et d"échange d"information de l"OCDE, selon le ministère allemand des finances. Il s"agit ainsi de permettre aux autorités des deux signataires «l"accès aux informations pertinentes, y compris bancaires, même lorsque aucune procédure pénale n"est engagée».

Selon L"Agefi suisse, l"Autriche, le Luxembourg et la Suisse sont discrètement alliés face aux pressions croissantes de la Commission européenne, mais les petits paradis fiscaux font bande à part et se désolidarisent de la Suisse. Le quotidien cite Robert Kirkby, directeur de Jersey Finance, qui estime que «le secret bancaire helvétique va trop loin et nous lui préférons la confidentialité». En clair, Jersey est prêt à divulguer des détails sur les actifs de certains clients, pour une période et une taxe donnée, à condition que l"autorité fiscale étrangère puisse motiver sa demande par des éléments prouvant une fraude. «C"est une manière raisonnable d"échanger de l"information», selon Robert Kirkby.

Tilney Investment Management a annoncé lundi qu’elle change sa marque commerciale Tilney Private Wealth Management en Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management (PWM). David Campbell, l’ancien CEO de Tilney devient global head of global investment solutions chez Deutsche Bank PWM. Il précise que le changement de nom est destiné à rassurer les clients existants et à en attirer de nouveaux. Le groupe Deutsche Bank a acheté Tilney en décembre 2007. La société Tilney Investment Management continue d’exister juridiquement.