Les actions ne sont peut-être pas encore à leur plus bas, mais il est temps d"y revenir progressivement, estime François-Marie Wojcik, le fondateur de la société de gestion indépendante Metropole Gestion.Le responsable préconise toutefois la prudence, surtout avec les valeurs cycliques et les actifs liés aux matières premières. Les estimations des résultats de ces sociétés mettent en évidence des anticipations de marges élevées, un signe indiquant que le bas du cycle n"a pas encore été atteint.Caractérisée par une approche de style «value», Metropole Gestion préconise un retour progressif sur les actions, en raison notamment de la faible rémunération offerte par la plupart des autres types d"actifs. Mais «le stock picking des actions doit être adapté», souligne Isabel Lévy, responsable de la gestion de la société.Il s"agit pour elle de sélectionner des «valeurs offrant des générations de cash flow suffisantes pour leurs refinancements à venir» ou capables de maintenir leur politique de dividende.Isabel Lévy est favorable à l"achat de valeurs bancaires «qui ont fait la preuve de leur solidité et qui sont maintenant valorisées en bas de cycle», comme BNP Paribas et Unicredito. Elle recherche aussi des valeurs de la distribution «totalement décotées» comme Carrefour, actuellement valorisée à 25 % de son chiffre d"affaires. Metropole Gestion a géré un encours moyen de 1,683 milliard d"euros, contre 2,455 milliards d"euros en 2007. La diminution de l"encours est due à la baisse des marchés, indiquent les responsables. La société a connu une faible décollecte de 65 millions d"euros, concentrée sur le premier semestre 2008. Puis, elle a enregistré une collecte régulière depuis le mois de juin.Ses fonds propres s"élèvent à 8,5 millions d"euros et devraient être portés à 9 millions d"euros cette année. Avec une clientèle actuellement composée d"investisseurs institutionnels à hauteur de 80 %, la société cherche à se développer auprès des CGPI. Commercialisant ses fonds sur les plateformes de distribution, elle organise des réunions avec les conseillers indépendants notamment avec Swiss Life et Thema.

Selon La Tribune, des petits actionnaires de Fortis vont déposer de nouveaux recours en justice, selon leur avocat Mischaël Modrikanem afin d"éviter la nationalisation de la partie néerlandaise et la vente des actifs belges à BNP Paribas.

Au 31 décembre, la fin du troisième trimestre de son exercice, le gestionnaire alternatif Man Group affichait un encours de 53,3 milliards de dollars, soit 21,15 % de moins que fin septembre et 28,55 % de moins que fin mars.La baisse s’explique partiellement par des remboursements nets de 3,2 milliards pour octobre-décembre (Man Group affiche cependant des rentrées nettes de 1 milliard sur les neuf mois) et par un effet de marché négatif de 4,7 milliards pour avril-décembre (alors qu’il est positif de 1,2 milliard pour octobre-décembre). A cela s’ajoute l’impact négatif sur les actifs sous gestion des mesures de réduction du risque dans la gamme MGS ainsi que du rééquilibrage des gammes AHL et Glenwood. Cela représente au total une ponction de 9,7 milliards de dollars pour octobre-décembre et de 11,4 milliards pour avril-décembre. Quant à l’effet de change et aux «autres facteurs», ils ont prélevé respectivement 2,6 milliards et 6,2 milliards de dollars. Man Group indique aussi qu'à fin décembre l’encours géré pour des particuliers représentait 32,3 milliards de dollars contre 40,8 milliards trois mois plus tôt et 43,5 milliards fin mars. Malgré des remboursements nets de 1,1 milliard en octobre-décembre, les particuliers ont apporté en net 3 milliards d’euros pour les neuf premiers mois de l’exercice. En revanche, les institutionnels ont sorti en net 2,1 milliards sur le trimestre à fin décembre et 2 milliards pour avril-décembre. L’encours institutionnel représentait au 31 décembre 21 milliards de dollars contre 26,8 milliards fin septembre et 31,1 milliards neuf mois auparavant.

Mercredi, Threadneedle a confirmé le départ fin janvier, «d’un commun accord», de David Gasparro, directeur de la distribution.Dans un premier temps, l’intéressé ne sera pas remplacé : l’appareil de distribution fonctionne convenablement avec des personnes confirmées. Le départ de David Gasparro sera mis à profit «pour revoir la structure et les activités de la fonction distribution à la lumière de l'évolution des conditions de marché, afin d’optimiser l’alignement de l’organisation avec les intérêts de la clientèle, indique le gestionnaire britannique.

Hedge funds suffered net redemptions of USD150bn in December, even though some funds decided to suspend redemptions, the Financial Times reports. These redemptions represent 10% of total assets in the sector, and bring total net outflows in 2008 to USD200bn.

The Corporate Special Opportunities hedge fund from Citigroup will pay out dividends to investors of only 3 cents on every USD1 invested, the Financial Times reports. These dividends are lower than expected as the bank has decided to close the fund.

Raoul Weil, a board member at UBS, who is currently suspended from his duties, has been classed as a ?fugitive? by the US Department of Justice, according to a verdict announced by a Federal judge in Miami. Charges have been pressed against the head of wealth management for helping 20,000 American clients to evade approximately USD20bn in US taxes, Le Temps reports, adding that the defendant, who currently resides in Switzerland, has no intention of turning himself in to the United States authorities.

An employee of Blackstone, Ramesh Chakrapani, has been accused by the Securities & Exchange Commission of insider trading in relation to the acquisition, in 2006, of the Albertson’s supermarket chain by a consortium which included Cerberus Capital, Supervalu and CVS. Chakrapani is accused of helping parents and friends to gain USD3.6m on the back of inside information.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in the United States has studied 19 complaints concerning trading operations by Bernard Madoff’s brokerage firm since 1999, but was not able to raise questions about investment advising activities, which were at the heart of the fraud, since it was not authorised to do so. FINRA oversees about 5,000 broker-dealers registered in the United States.

The OECD has warned that the current regulatory framework in Europe increases the risk of problems on the financial markets, the Financial Times reports. The organisation proposes a European union of regulatory agencies, on the model of the one used to define the monetary policy of the European Central Bank.

As of 31 December, the end of the third quarter of its fiscal year, the alternative manager Man Group had assets of USD53.3bn, which is 21.15% less than at the end of September, and 28.55% less than at the end of March.The decline is due partially to net redemptions of USD3.2bn in October-December (Man Group, however, shows net inflows of USD1bn in the nine-month period), and negative market effects of USD4.7bn in April-December (though they were positive to the tune of USD1.2bn in October-December).In addition to this, assets under management were negatively impacted by measures to reduce risks for the MGS range, and rebalancing of the AHL and Glenwood product ranges. These resulted in a reduction of USD9.7bn in October-December and of USD11.4bn in April-December.Currency effects and ?other factors? respectively cost USD2.6bn and USD6.2bn. Man Group also indicates that at the end of December, assets under management for retail clients totalled USD32.3bn, compared with USD40.8bn three months earlier, and USD43.5bn at the end of March. Despite net redemptions of USD1.1bn in October-December, retail investors brought in a net total of EUR3bn in the first nine months of the fiscal year.However, institutionals withdrew a total of USD2.1bn in the quarter ending on 31 December, and USD2bn in April-December. Institutional assets as of the end of December represented USD21bn, compared with USD26.8bn at the end of September, and USD31.1bn nine months previously.

La Tribune reports that an alliance of Citigroup and Morgan Stanley in the area of brokerage to create a financial intermediation joint venture will accelerate the transformation of Morgan Stanley into a banking holding company, while for its part, Citgroup will abandon its profile as a ?genuinely universal global bank.?Some analysts suggest that Citigroup, which has already announced 52,000 layoffs, may announce quarterly losses of USD2.6bn.

According to the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT), real estate investment trusts in the United States lost an average of 37.3% last year, IPE reports, adding that the FTSE NAREIT Equity REIT Index declined by 37.73%, despite a 6.39% rebound in December. The category which performed worst was REITs specialised in commercial real estate, which had average losses of 74.8%, while funds specialised in industrial real estate were down 67.47%. However, REITs specialised in warehouse properties earned returns of 5.1%.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports that the takeover of cominvest (240 open-ended funds) by Allianz Global Investors (230) will result in the closure of many funds, which will leave about 300 funds in the range. The list of funds to be closed will be revealed by the end of March. Together, AGI and cominvest represent about EUR300bn in assets, of which EUR74.7bn are in open-ended funds (as of the end of November), nearly as much as Union Investment (co-operative banks), which has EUR77.1bn.

UBS and HSBC are being targeted by investors who lost money in the Madoff fraud, the Financial Times observes. The newspaper suggests that the two banks should have protected assets allocated to Bernard Madoff more carefully. Lawsuits against the banks have been filed in New York and Luxembourg, and more are in preparation. More than USD4bn are up for grabs, the FT states.

On Wednesday, Deutsche Bank published a provisional estimate of its pre-tax losses at about EUR4.8bn for fourth quarter 2008, due to ?exceptionally difficult? market conditions, which weighed down investments and securities trading; final results for fourth quarter will be published on 5 February. The conditions had a significant impact on trading of credit products (including operations on behalf of the bank’s own capital), activities in the area of equities derivatives, and equities trading with the bank’s own capital. In addition, the quarterly results reflect a reduction in higher-risk positions, a significant downgrade of credit resellers, and restructuring costs. The wealth & asset management division has also suffered losses largely due to an amortisation of non-material assets at DWS Scudder and subsidies for money market funds.For 2008 overall, the bank is projecting pre-tax losses for the group as a whole of EUR3.9bn.

On Wednesday, Universal Investment, the major German specialist in administration and fund accounting, which manages about EUR84bn in assets, announced the recruitment of two insourcing specialists. Jörg Kaden was a member of the board of directors at Frankfurter Service-KAG (FSKAG), and will now become director of insourcing activities. The second new recruit is Stefan Krapf who was previously head of the IT division at FSKAG and a member of the board of directors at the Luxembourg affiliate of Frankfurt-Trust (BHF-Bank, Sal. Oppenheim group): he becomes a member of the board of directors at Universal-IT-Services, and will be in charge of the IT aspects of insourcing activities.

On Wednesday, Threadneedle confirmed the departure at the end of January, ?by mutual agreement,? of David Gasparro, director of sales.Gasparro will initially not be replaced: the distribution apparatus is currently functioning well with the current personnel.The departure of Gasparro will be taken as an occasion to ?reconsider the structure, activities, and function of distribution in the light of the evolving market conditions, in order to optimise the alignment of the organisation with the interests if clients,? the British fund manager states.

According to documents furnished by Lazard to potential buyers, pre-tax profits and earnings at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC declined in recent year by 923% and 54%, respectively, the Wall Street Journal reports. Never the less, salaries at the trading affiliate of the group increased by 11.5% in 2008 and 11% in 2007, although bonuses declined slightly in 2007. According to Tamar Frankel, a professor of law at the University of Boston, Bernard Madoff probably boosted the pay of his traders to give the impression that activities were robust and do avoid raising the suspicions as to the health of the group as a whole.

The independent management firm EMCore SA, based in Zug, a specialist in convertible bonds, has been selected by Julius Baer as sub-advisor for the Global Convert sub-fund of its Luxembourg Sicav JB Multibound, launched on 15 October 1993. The currency of reference for the fund is the Euro, and shares hedged for currency risks are denominated in Euros, US dollars, and Swiss francs.The fund currently has about CHF100m in assets, and may soon grow to a volume of CHF200-200m. The product was previously managed by the bond team at Julius Baer in Zurich. With EMCore, a specialist in management for institutional investors (CHF3.5bn in assets), Julius Baer gains access to expertise in this particular area, while the independent management boutique will profit commercially from the brand image of Julius Baer with retail clients.The portfolio of the Global Convert fund is divided between a defensive allocation and a cyclical/tactical allocation. The fund has the potential to participate in rising markets, and also to obtain excess net returns in stagnating or falling market conditions, says Julius Baer. To conserve capital invested, the fund invests exclusively in investment grade convertible bonds, which is also reflected in the choice of the new benchmark index for the fund, UBS Global Conv. Index.

For 2009, Jeffries Putnam Lovell, an affiliate of the Jeffries & Company investment bank, is predicting that large-scale mergers and acqusitions in asset management will increase, though they were scarce in 2008. This will be due to the forced sales of investment divisions by commercial banks and insurers, concentration in the alternative management business, and increased opportunities for acquisitions by financial sector businesses which emerge relatively unscathed from the financial and credit crises. The most active buyers in the past ten years, commercial and investment banks, as well as insurers, will sell their asset management divisions, or seek strategic partners for them.USD1.99trn last yearBy the number of transactions, 2008 was the second most active year in global asset management, with 217 deals, compared with 242 in 2007. The assets concerned were equivalent to those in 2007, at USD1.99trn (the record was set in 2006, at USD2.65trn). On the basis of declared total amounts, volumes have plunged drastically, to USD16.1bn, compared with USD52.1bn in 2007. In addition, 2008 was only the fifth-largest year ever by this criterion. Only three deals measured more than USD1bn, compared with 15 in 2007. Kevin Pakenham, managing director of Jeffries Putnam Lovell in London, says European banks are now facing the consequences of their success as distributors and their failure as producers of investment management services. In 2009, we will see a continuation of the emergence of a strong independent sector, along the lines of the model which is already well-established in the United States, the manager says.

To win back retail clients, Putnam Investments on 1 January launched four absolute performance mutual funds promising returns 1, 3, 5, and 7 percentage points higher than those of Treasury bills, as measured by a Merrill Lynch index. The result will be measured at three-year intervals, so that losses in one year may be compensated by performance in another, the Wall Street Journal reports. Putnam had assets at the end of 2008 of USD106bn, of which USD54bn were in mutual funds and USD52bn managed on behalf of institutional clients.

Minimal subscription for the new British-registered OEIC (Open-Ended Investment Company) Baring Global Agriculture Fund is set at GBP2,000, Baring Asset Management announced on Wednesday, adding that management commission is set at 1% per year. The fund, announced last year (see Newsmanagers of 20 May 2008) will be invested in companies which earn a large part of their revenues from activities related to agriculture, or which are likely to profit from this theme. The product is managed by Jonathan Blake, who also manages the Baring Global Resources Fund.During an initial four-month period, the fund will be sold exclusively to IFAs via the Standard Life platform, says Rod Aldridge, head of UK retail distribution at Barings.

Des projets sont reportés. Toutefois, tous les actifs ne pourront pas être absorbés par le marché compte tenu du ralentissement économique

Les avantages consentis aux occupants ont augmenté en 2008. Les loyers devraient globalement baisser en 2009

La société de gestion allemande Hauck & Aufhäuser Asset Management GmbH (HAAM GmbH) se lance sur le marché français. Elle vient d"obtenir l"agrément de l"Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) pour la commercialisation de son fonds H&A Lux Equities Value Invest, un fonds actions européennes géré selon une approche value par Nils Bartram et Gerold Granzeuer. Pour le distribuer, elle s"appuiera sur Investeam, société française de ?third party marketing? spécialiste de la commercialisation de fonds en Europe et en Amérique du Nord, avec laquelle elle a signé un accord d"exclusivité. Les investisseurs institutionnels, les CGPI et la clientèle privée seront ciblés. Hauck & Aufhäuser Asset Management GmbH est filiale à 100 % de Hauck & Aufhäuser Privatbankiers, qui est l"une des dernières banques privées en Allemagne détenue majoritairement par des actionnaires privés. L"entité gère un encours de 2,9 milliards d"euros, sous forme de mandats institutionnels et de fonds sous sa marque et par délégation pour compte de tiers. Elle est plus particulièrement spécialisée dans la gestion d"actions et obligations européennes. Cette incursion en France constitue sa première tentative d"internationalisation. Le partenariat avec Investeam, qui lui permet d"aborder l"Hexagone sans trop investir, se limite pour l"instant à ce fonds, mais pourrait éventuellement être élargi à d"autres produits, plutôt obligataires. Pour Investeam, il s"agit de la toute première concrétisation de ses projets de développement en Allemagne, où la société est en train de s"implanter. Une structure est en cours de création sous la houlette de Jan Schulemann. En plus d"importer des gestions allemandes, cette entité envisage également d"exporter des produits de sociétés françaises ou autre en Allemagne. Investeam est aussi présent au Canada et a d"ailleurs récemment introduit en France le canadien DundeeWealth.

Selon Il Sole ? 24 Ore, Alessandro Profumo, administrateur délégué d"UniCredit, s"est rendu la semaine dernière à Abu Dhabi où il aurait rencontré les représentants du fonds souverain Aabar Investment Company, la branche d"investissement de la famille royale. Cette visite est probablement liée à la nécessité pour la banque italienne de reconstituer un noyau stable d"investisseurs institutionnels, commente le quotidien italien.

Selon l"Agefi, la Caisse d’amortissement de la dette sociale (Cades) va tripler son montant d"émissions à 33,1 milliards d’euros en 2009, La cades «prévoit, entre autres, 3 à 5 opérations de référence en euros pour 10 à 17 milliards d’euros, des emprunts en devises pour 3,3 à 6,3 milliards, et du financement court terme pour 6,3 à 18,3 milliards», précise le quotidien numérique.

Selon La Tribune, Crédit Agricole a annoncé mardi l’ouverture de 2 millions de nouveaux livrets A et le transfert de 200.000 livrets issus des réseaux historiques.

Metropole Gestion, société de gestion indépendante spécialisée sur le style #value# (recherche de valeurs décotées), se veut selon Les Echos #raisonnablement serein#. Avec 8,5 millions d’euros de fonds propres, Metropole prévoit de suivre cette année encore une stratégie de développement #maîtrisée et raisonnable#. Le quotidien rappelle que la société a lancé à la fin de l"année dernière une activité de multigestion (fonds de fonds) et, comme d’autres, un fonds d’obligations d’entreprises.