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16/03/2009

Monde - Fonds souverains, leurs atouts pour traverser la crise

Si les fonds souverains n’ont pas été épargnés par la crise, «ils apparaissent toutefois moins affectés que les autres investisseurs et disposent d’atouts que n’ont pas les autres pour traverser la tempête», analyse Les Echos. Leurs actifs auraient progressé de 18 %, à 3.900 milliards de dollars, en 2008.Et à la différence des hedge funds, ils utilisent peu l’effet de levier.
16/03/2009

France - Natixis : remous autour des bonus

Le montant des bonus versés aux collaborateurs de Natixis étaient attendus pour le 13 mars mais ils n’ont pas été dévoilés, rapporte l’Agefi. L’enveloppe de bonus a été réduite de 70 % à 75 % dans la BFI, avec une partie différée et, «épouvantés par la minceur de l’enveloppe proposée aux équipes (?), certains chefs de desk auraient décidé de négocier avec la direction», poursuit le quotidien. Certains contrats étrangers et l’impact du plan social sur le montant global des sommes à verser aux collaborateurs réduisent d’autant les sommes à répartir, précise l’Agefi, ce qui provoque un certain malaise social, notamment en France.
16/03/2009

Monde - Alex Stanic quitte BNY Mellon

Alex Stanic, gérant du Newton Global Opportunites, a démissionné et devrait rejoindre la boutique britannique River & Mercantile en tant que nouveau patron des actions, rapporte Citywire le 12 mars. L’intéressé gère aussi le BNY Mellon Global Equity et le BNY Mellon Global Intrepid.
16/03/2009

Autriche - Sonja Kohn (Medici) : "Je suis une victime de Madoff"

Dans un entretien téléphonique à Il Sole ? 24 Ore, Sonja Kohn, la fondatrice de Bank Medici, la banque autrichienne qui a perdu plus de 2 milliards d"euros dans la fraude Madoff, déclare : «je suis moi aussi une victime de Madoff, pas une complice». Celle qui fut «l"amie» de Bernard Madoff dément les rumeurs selon lesquelles elle se serait enfuie. «Je suis à mon poste à la banque et en contact continu avec les autorités américaines, notamment la SEC», affirme-t-elle.
16/03/2009

Etats-Unis - Faillie, AIG prime tout de même ses anciens responsables financiers

Selon Le Figaro, citant le Wall Street Journal qui a révélé l’information, l’assureur américain AIG va verser quelque 450 millions de dollars de primes aux responsables de ses activités financières pourtant à l’origine des pertes abyssales du groupe : 99,3 milliards de dollars l’an dernier. #Dans les hautes sphères de l’administration américaine, l’information a provoqué la colère des principaux conseillers économiques de Barack Obama#, assure Le Figaro.
16/03/2009

Etats-Unis - ING IM fusionne deux fonds immobiliers fermés

ING Investment Management a annoncé que les boards of trustees des fonds immobiliers fermés ING Clarion Real Estate Income Fund et ING Clarion Global Real Estate Income Fund ont approuvé la fusion de ces fonds. Ces derniers sont gérés par ING Clarion Real Estate Securities (11 milliards de dollars d’encours fin 2008).
16/03/2009

Etats-Unis - Depart du senior vice président de Legg Mason

Le vice-président exécutifs de Legg Mason, Peter Bain, va quitter la banque à la fin du mois, indique efinancial news. Les responsabilités de celui qui dirigeait la division asset management et qui a décidé de «saisir d’autres opportunités», seront partagées entre plusieurs personnes en interne.
16/03/2009

Etats-Unis - Daniel Sontag rejoint le board de BlackRock

Daniel C. Sontag, president de Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management, a été nommé membre du conseil d’administration de BlackRock (1,3 billion de dollars d’encours fin décembre). Avec Brian T. Moynihan, president of blogal banking and wealth management de Bank of America, il remplace comme administrateur John Thain et Gregory J. Fleming, démissionnaires.
16/03/2009

Belgique - Fortis : expiration de la convention avec Ping An

Selon le site Boursorama, citant Reuters, Fortis a indiqué dimanche que la convention signé en 2007 avec l’assureur chinois Ping An et qui détient 4,99% de son capital, a expiré en fin de semaine dernière sans préciser les conséquences de cette implication.
16/03/2009

Belgique - Fortis : pas de dividende en 2008

Selon le site Boursorama, citant Reuters, Fortis a indiqué dimanche qu’il ne versera pas de dividende au titre de l’exercice 2008, lequel devrait se conclure par une perte de 22,5 milliards d’euros.
13/03/2009

Sweden - East Capital launches a fund of undervalued assets

The Swedish management firm East Capital, specialised in the markets of Eastern Europe, is launching a fund of undervalued assets. The product, entitled East Capital Special Opportunities Fund, will invest in solid companies with weak valuations for reasons related to the market or the situations of various shareholders. The investment universe covered includes Russia and Eastern Europe.?Investments will be made as a first priority in shares in publicly traded companies, or in shares which may be traded. They may also include other financial instruments. East Capital will retain investments which have both clear potential for appreciation and an opportunity to exit within four years,? says a press statement.East CapitaL Explorer AB will invest EUR35m in the fund, which is slated for launch in second quarter 2009.The product is aimed at institutional investors and other qualified investors, and is limited to USD100m in size. The duration of the fund will be four years.
13/03/2009

World - Hedge funds: Liquidity comes at a price

Do managers of more liquid hedge funds tend to deliver less alpha than illiquid managers? This is the question Olympia asks in a new study. The answer is affirmative: ?investors may well pay the price of lower alpha to obtain higher liquidity, particularly for strategies that use illiquid financial instruments.?The study, led by Ivan Guidotti, also finds that ?investing in young funds should not be considered a panacea by managers of funds of hedge funds seeking talented and liquid hedge fund managers.? Although the study confirms that young funds tend to outperform older funds, the best young funds are still the ones which are least liquid.
13/03/2009

France - Governance of funds returns to the foreground

Due to the financial crisis and the mounting number of scandals in the investment industry, ?the theme of governance of funds is becoming an important current issue again,? said Aymeric Poizot, an analyst at Fitch Ratings, at the ratings agency’s annual conference, held on Tuesday. In France, compared with other European countries, the rules and principles of governance applied to management firms are ?relatively flexible, particularly in relation to supervision of the company by executive management,? Fitch Ratings found in a study published last December. ?The board of directors is not required to include independent members, nor to create auditing committees to consider pay scales.? The same thing is true on the level of OPCVM funds. The most common legal structure is FCP funds (90% of French OPCVMs), which are not supervised by a board of directors, unlike Sicav funds.Fitch also notes in its study that ?French regulations do not require independent evaluation, since the management firm remains reponsible for the valuation of assets, contrary to the case in other European countries.?
13/03/2009

Luxembourg - Nordea contracts management of Far Eastern Value Fund to TMAI

The management of the Far Eastern Value Fund BP-USD, a sub-fund of the Luxembourg Sicav Nordea-1, which had USD102m in assets as of the end of January, has been transferred to TMAI, who will manage the fund from Tokyo. Nordea was seeking a manager for the fund who who could provide a combination of top-down analysis and bottom-up stock-picking, rather than a specialist in a given management style.
13/03/2009

United States - Oppenheimer recruits a VP from Deutsche Bank

Oppenheimer Funds Inc (OFI) has announced the recruitment of Krishna Memani as senior vice president, head of the high grade fixed income team. Memani was previously managing director, head of the US & Euroopean credit analyst team at Deutsche Bank. At Oppenheimer, he will be responsible for management of high grade bond portfolios, including the Oppenheimer Core Bond Fund, the U.S. Government Trust Fund, and the Oppenheimer Limited-Term Government Fund, as well as mandates.
13/03/2009

United Kingdom - SLI presents balanced books for 2008

After GBP90m in restructuring charges related to the Global Liquidity Funds sub-fund, Standard Life Investments (SLI) has posted pre-tax results for 2008 that put it just even, compared with profits of GBP100m in 2007. Total assets declined by 14%, to GBP123.8bn as of the end of December, compared with GBP143.4bn twelve months earlier, while assets under management for third parties are down 5% to GBP45.5bn. EBIT rose 9% to GBP82m.Net subscriptions from third parties fell 57% to GBP3.39bn. Excluding highly volatile flows of assets related to money market funds, net inflows from third parties totalled GBP4.74bn, compared with GBP6.85bn. Retail sales were relatively stable over the year, while new money came primarily from institutional investors.
13/03/2009

United Kingdom - Barings launches a fund to combat inflation

Investment Week reports that Barings will launch a multi-asset class non-UCITS retail scheme (NURS) fund on March 23, which will be available only in pounds Sterling, and which will be domiciled in the United Kingdom. The objective of the fund is to generate performance higher than inflation, as measured by the retail price index (RPI) over the long term. The product, aimed at retail investors, may invest up to 60% of its assets in equities, and will belong to the IMA’s ?cautious managed funds? category. The manager, Andrew Cole, predicts that 75% of performance will come from strategic or tactical allocations, while the rest will result from active management.Minimal subscription will be GBP2,000. Baring will charge a front-end fee of 5% and a management commission of 1.5%.
13/03/2009

Netherlands - Complete restructuring at ING IM

Jan Straatman, former CEO of Pearl-Axial Investments, who became CIO of ING Investment Management in August 2008, has announced a complete restructuring of the management firm. The company will abandon its ?silo? arrangement by asset class in favour of a multi-boutique system, with teams whose ideas may be deployed over several different strategies, IPE reports. Risk management will be maintained at the strategy level, and will be transversally covered by an independent diagnostic risk team from the hedge fund world. Funds People reports for its part that managers who do not earn positive returns will not earn bonuses, while Global Pensions states that bonuses will be paid out in instalments over two to three years, and withdrawn if managers underperform. Straatman has told Global Pensions that the restructuring will be completed by the end of the year.
13/03/2009

Europe - Inflows to European funds in January

European funds have posted net subscriptions for the third consecutive month in January, totalling EUR22bn, according to Lipper FMI. This is the best result in 14 months.At first glance, these figures seem to mark a turnaround for the market. But in reality, activities have been propped up by seasonal investments in French money market funds and ETFs, Lipper observes.Aside from inflows to French money market funds (EUR25bn), the European fund sector finished the month in the red. Similarly, excluding ETFs, funds would have shown net outflows of EUR4bn. For the month, they show a net inflow of only EUR2bn.The real good news in January, says Lipper, is that redemptions have slowed, particularly in bonds, which posted their first month of net inflows in more than a year.The firm which posted the strongest net inflows was Barclays, with EUR3.5bn. For equities, excluding ETFs, M&G stands out with EUR390m in inflows.
13/03/2009

Germany - SRI gains ground

Despite the financial crisis, many funds managed with an awareness of ecological and social criteria have been placed on the market recently. In the German-speaking countries alone (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), 50 new products were launched in 2008, representing total assets of EUR900m, according to the Sustainable Business Institut (SBI). Handelsblatt reports that some sustainable development fund promoters have posted net subscriptions at a time when net redemptions for asset management in Europe totalled EUR300bn, according to Lipper FMI. However, with market effects taken into account, assets in SRI funds fell by one third, a contraction less severe than the average for German equities funds (-38%).
13/03/2009

United Kingdom - Redemptions suspended at Weavering

Weavering Macro Fixed Income, the flagship fund from Weavering Capital, a London-based hedge fund management firm, has frozen redemptions after an internal investigation found swaps for a significant sum with a firm related to the fund manager, the Financial Times reports.
13/03/2009

United States - Bill Gross (Pimco) returns to Treasuries

Bill Gross has announced that he has increased the allocation to Treasuries in the portfolio of the Total Return Fund from Pimco (Allianz group), putting it at its highest level since July 2007, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. Gross, who was also long on MBS, moved to a negative position on Treasuries in January.
13/03/2009

Spain - Managers look to outsource fund administration

To save more on costs which are not directly related to management, Spanish management firms are seeking to outsource their back-office activities, while, according to Expansión, actors such as BNP Paribas, Santander, Socgen (Société Générale), Bancoval (RBC Dexia) and Accenture are experiencing an increased number of inquiries from potential outsourcing clients. Management firms interested in these services include some of the top 20 firms in Spain, and particularly mid-sized banks, as well as foreign management firms. Outsourcing administration activities may bring savings of up to 30% on fixed costs. Among the larger actors in management, only Bankinter has outsourced its fund administration, to Accenture.
13/03/2009

Germany - Allianz to invest EUR10bn in real estate

Stefan Brendgen, the new CEO of Allianz Real Estate Deutschland GmbH, announced at the MIPIM conference in Cannes that the German insurance firm is planning to invest about EUR10bn worldwide in real estate in the next five years, Handelsblatt reports. The investments will be financed entirely with the group’s own equity. The objective will be to increase the proportion of the portfolio allocated to real estate by half, from a level of 4% currently, and to diversify assets geographically. Currently, Allianz owns properties valued at EUR17.2bn. The insurer has also decided to ?give some air? to its portfolio, as only active management is likely to provide the target returns of 9% to 10%. To achieve this, Allianz has assembled a team of 450 people worldwide, including nearly 150 personnel in Germany.

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