P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Northern Trust is strengthening its positions in Asia-Pacific. The asset management firm, based in Chicago, on 25 February announced the opening of a representative office in Malaysia to assist its current institutional clients to develop its activities in the country and the region. It becomes the seventh affiliate of the firm in Asia. To direct the new location, Northern Trust has recruited Ariani Rustam from Bank Negara Malaysia, the central bank of the country. Before joining Northern Trust, she served for 12 years in the institution where she was senior executive in charge of risk management, operations, quantitative analysis, and in the past five years, director of the External Fund Management division, in which she participated in the introduction of new asset classes to diversify the investment of reserves from the Malaysian central bank. The Asia-Pacific region already represents a major area for growth at Northern Trust. Its assets under custody have risen by 26% per year between 2008 and 2013, while its assets under management have increased by 15% per year over the past five years.
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Morgan Stanley Wealth management has announced an addition to its range of consulting services for defined contribution retirement programmes, with the introduction of a new discretionary investment programme. The new programme allows retirement heads at Morgan Stanley and Graysone to assume some fiduciary responsibilities to assist the providers of retirement plans with allocation decisions and complex selections. The providers may use Morgan Stanley models based on risk, or new target date portfolios put in place by Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.
BNY Mellon on February 24 announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire the remaining 65% interest of HedgeMark International, LLC, a current affiliate and a provider of hedge fund managed account and risk analytic services. It has held a 35% ownership stake in HedgeMark since 2011. BNY Mellon will integrate HedgeMark’s capabilities with its Global Risk Solutions offeringsThe deal is expected to close in the second quarter, subject to regulatory approval. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Founded in 2009 and headquartered New York, HedgeMark assists in the structuring, oversight, and risk monitoring of hedge funds, specifically dedicated managed accounts.
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } In a long article, the Wall Street Journal discusses the departure of Mohamed El-Erian from Pimco, where he was CEO, and seeks to paint the mood which reigns at the US asset management firm, with its founder, the emblematic Bill Gross. “A high-pressure work environment that turned less collegial over the past year, a deteriorating relationship between the two senior executives and certain decisions by Mr. Gross that confused some employees” are said to be responsible for the departure of El-Erian. In June last year, Gross and El-Erian, who had long been considered a successor, confronted each other publicly over the subject of the conduct of the founder of the firm, the WSJ reports. In November, the executive board tried to make peace between them. El-Erian was offered more power. But he announced that he would be leaving. “You can’t leave,” Gross protested. “We need you.” Some thought that the two men would eventually overcome their differences. At the beginning of this year, El-Erian agreed to work with a mediator to fin a new way of making the company work, but Gross rejected the mediator. At the end of January, El-Erian therefore announced to Gross that he had taken his decision and left. The WSJ article also relates that Gross is a very demanding boss, that the working conditions are difficult, but that the firm pays some of the best salaries in the world of asset management.
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } “A good year for asset management,” the chairman of the board at La Banque Postale, Rémy Weber, said at a presentation of the bank’s results. Assets under management at affiliates of the asset management unit of La Banque Postale last year rose 3.5%, to EUR150bn. Net banking proceeds are up 11.9% to EUR134m. Management costs ere stable at EUR68m, while gross operating results were up 27.2%, to EUR66m. The cost/income ratio improved by tens of basis points, to 52.7%. Net inflows at La Banque Postale Asset Management totalled over EUR900m, excluding CNP, driven by the dynamism of institutional clients and despite outflows from the retail segment. The good performance of the markets and the performance of management have also brought in a level of assets at the end of 2013 more than EUR4.5bn higher than 2012.
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Legg Mason Global Asset Management is adding to its team in Italy with the appointment of Stefano Colombo as head of client relations, Investment Europe reveals. Before joining Legg Mason, Colombo was in charge of client service at State Street Global Advisors, after working at PwC in its division dedicated to the financial services industry, and more particularly in asset management and private banking.
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }Nordea has signed an agreement withBanca Popolare di Vicenza, by the terms of which the Italian bankwill distribute the 66 sub-funds of the Nordea I Sicav which arelicensed for sale in Italy, Bluerating reports.P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; }
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } JP Morgan Asset Management is planning to reduce its annual fees for the JPM Emerging Markets trust to 0.75% from 1%, if assets in the fund reach GBP800m after 1 July, Money Marketing reports. Assets under management in the strategy managed by Richard Tetherington currently total GBP688m, The performance commission will be maintained at 10%. In second half 2013, the trust was down 5.7%, while the MSCI Emerging Markets Index was down by only 1.4%.
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } As part of the trial of four former employees of Bernard Madoff, his former secretary on Monday declared, in her own defence, that she considered the disgraced financier a “big brother” to her and that she granted him such trust that she never questioned his instructions, the Wall Street Journal reports. Annette Bongiorno, who worked with the fraudster for 40 years, considered him her “hero” and never imagined that he was orchestrating a massive fraud. The secretary said she learned everything from Madoff and was therefore not surprised that she often had to backdate documents.
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The bank UBS is prepared to pay EUR180m to EUR200m to the German tax authorities to avoid charges over its role in tax evasion practiced by Germans, according to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. The bank “is preparing” to have to pay a sum of this order, the newspaper reports on the basis of “financial sources.” It would be “the largest penalty ever paid by a bank in Germany for complicity in tax evasion,” Süddeutsche Zeitung reports. The exact amount is subject to tough negotiations between the German authorities and the bank, the newspaper states. The regional government of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2012 purchased a CD containing information on German tax evaders, some of whose money was placed at UBS in Switzerland. In total, about CHF20bn in untaxed assets may have been placed by Germans with UBS, according to the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Carl Vine, former managing director of UBS and SAC Capital Advisors, has teamed up with the firm Dymon Asia Capital in Singapore to launch a global long/short equity hedge fund, Bloomberg indicates. The fund will primarily invest in the Asia-Pacific region. The management of the fund will be assured by a team led by Vine based in Oxford. Dymon Asia Capital will provide the infrastructure for the fund. The product will have USD150m in assets at start, and does not plan to accept subscriptions beyond USD500m, according to Bloomberg.
The State Street Global Investor Confidence Index rose by 8.7 points in February to reach 123.0. The increase was primarily driven by North American institutional investors, with the North American ICI rising 12.3 points to 125.5, up from January’s revised level of 113.2. Risk sentiment was more tepid elsewhere, with the European ICI falling slightly from January’s revised reading of 112.8 to settle at 110.6. Offsetting this was a small increase in confidence among Asian investors, with the Asian ICI rising 3.3 points to 106.6 from the January reading of 103.3.“Weaker US economic data and troubles in emerging markets sparked a dramatic correction in global equities in late January and early February, but longer-term investors did not panic” noted Michael Metcalfe, senior vice president and head of multi-asset strategy, State Street Global Markets. “Instead, they used the sell-off in risk assets as a buying opportunity and measured investor sentiment rose in all regions bar Europe.”
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The time bell has sounded for a cleanup at Ignis Asset Management (AM). The British asset management firm, an affiliate of the Phoenix insurance group, has announced a restructuring of its offshore fund range, in order to use Luxembourg as the single centre for its European funds. The merger of funds domiciled in Dublin, Ireland, into its Luxembourg structure aims to realise cost savings and to allow for greater growth of assets in the future. The Ignis AM Luxembourg Sicav currently has GBP2.6bn in assets (EUR3.15bn), compared with GBP300m (EUR363bn) for its Irish counterpart. “These changes will allow our activity to be concentrated on the most appropriate products, and those which we estimate are the most in phase with the future needs of our clients,” Ignis AM explains in a note.
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Robeco has merged its natural resources and infrastructure equities funds into a single fund specialised in trends in global growth, Citywire reports. The new fund entitled Robeco Global Growth Trends Equities will be managed by Henk Grrotvels and Marco van Lent.
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Danish pension fund ATP, one of the largest in Europe (DKK592bn), has sold its German bonds and fixed income swaps for DKK20bn, in order to increase its investment in infrastructure, Financial Times fund management reports. It is the first major change for the fund since the arrival of its new CEO, Carsten Stendevad.
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The data provider MSCI on 25 February published the results of its half-yearly study of allocation practices at pension and sovereign funds worldwide. The study was conducted in fourth quarter 2013 of 80 institutionals worldwide with nearly USD4trn in assets. “The study finds that the largest challenge for institutionals is to unify long-term objectives with the short-term character of asset management. It finds no consequence on the frequency of strategc allocation decisions, or on the methods used. This can lead to considerable variation in investment results,” says Neil Gilfedder, managing director and head of applied analytical research at MSCI, cited in a statement.
La hryvnia poursuit sa chute mercredi et a enfoncé le seuil des 10 contre un dollar. La devise ukrainienne traitait mercredi midi autour de 10,25 contre le billet vert, soit une chute de plus de 5% par rapport au cours de clôture de la veille. Vendredi, avant la chute de Viktor Ianoukovitch, la hryvnia s'échangeait à 8,95 contre un dollar. Les obligations ukrainiennes libellées en dollar, qui avaient connu un rally lundi, connaissent également leur deuxième jour de baisse.
Le bas niveau de l’inflation en Suède rend possibles de nouvelles baisses de taux dans les prochains mois, selon le compte rendu, publié mercredi, de la dernière réunion monétaire de la Riksbank. Le vice-gouverneur Per Jansson a précisé qu’il ne voterait pas en faveur d’un relèvement des taux tant que le taux d’inflation annuel, mesuré par l’indice CPIF, ne serait pas revenu à plus de 1,5%. Il est tombé à 0,4% en décembre, bien plus bas qu’attendu.
L'économie espagnole est en bonne voie d’atteindre une croissance de 1,0% en 2014, un rythme meilleur que celui que Madrid anticipait jusqu'à présent et qui devrait permettre au pays de renouer avec les créations d’emplois pour la première fois en six ans, selon le président du gouvernement Mariano Rajoy. Dans son discours annuel sur l'état de la nation devant le Parlement, il a également déclaré que la croissance devrait s’accélérer en 2015. Les prévisions 2014 du chef du gouvernement espagnol sont conformes à celles que la Commission européenne a publiées hier également.
LBP AM accuse 2,4 milliards d’euros de sorties nettes en 2013, du fait des retraits nets sur les contrats d’assurance vie CNP, dont elle assure la gestion, et de la décollecte nette sur ses fonds destinés au grand public. Elle a collecté auprès des institutionnels et des entreprises.
Tous les Etats n'ont pas la même définition de ces produits, ce qui complique la mise en œuvre d'Emir. L'Esma demande à Bruxelles des précisions en urgence
Mt.gox, la principale plate-forme d'échange de la monnaie virtuelle bitcoin, a décidé mardi de suspendre toute transaction sur son site internet en raison «de récents articles de presse». La plate-forme avait déjà suspendu les retraits plus tôt dans le mois après avoir remarqué une «activité inhabituelle». Des vols de bitcoin sont soupçonnés d’avoir eu lieu sur Mt.gox, où le prix de la monnaie virtuelle s’est effondré avant la suspension du site.