With the Pimco Short Asset Investment Fund (acronym PAIDX), Pimco (Allianz group) on Wednesday launched a fund which uses a short-term strategy aiming to function as a substitute for money market products, offering higher returns with lower risk. The portfolio, managed by Jerome Schneider, will invest at least 65% of its assets in fixed income products, with a duration not to exceed one and a half years. The fund may use derivatives without restriction.Management commission ranges from 0.24% for institutional shares to 0.59% for D-class shares on sale from distributors.

The sanctions commission of the French financial market regulator, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), on 31 May announced that it has issued fines totalling EUR6.2m to three hedge funds, CMA, Coudrée and CIF, which short-sold shares in Natixis. The three funds which issued the orders in September 2008 decided to short-sell Natixis shares, two weeks after the announcement by the French bank of a capital increase of EUR3.7bn. The transactions were complicated by turbulence on the markets provoked by the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, and the funds were not in a position to deliver the equities it had short-sold within the agreed time periods, which led to a suspension from trading and also contributed to a fall in the value of Natixis shares. The three major banks implicated in the affair, however, were not found guilty. The commission found that Goldman Sachs, UBS and Citibank had correctly fulfilled their duties as clearing members, while the AMF college had accused them of failing to prevent delays in the delivery of Natixis shares.

Despite the crisis, the asset management sector remains alive and well in France. “We have reached a fast pace of growth, with 40 new companies created already in 2012,” Xavier Parain deputy director of asset management at the French financial regulator, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), commented on 31 May at a conference held jointly by the French financial management association (AFG), the French institutional investor association (AF2I) and the international association of risk management professionals (PRMIA).Parain also stated that since the beginning of the year, the AMF has had to withdraw one license, compared with 2 licenses withdrawn during 2011. The AMF exec says that the unique French ecosystem includes 600 asset management firms and offers a very rich selection of types of management. In this environment, the AMF is continuing to promote asset management firms which are “innovative and robust” and subject to a highly rigorous licensing process and very regular controls, including one routine control 12 to 18 months after licenses are issued, and more detailed controls over the life of the company.At the conference, which dealt with analysis of risks related to outsourcing of financial management, Parain defended the French approach, which is far from the “empty shell” that other European regulators accept. “We are probably the most rigorous regulator in Europe,” said Parain. Wholesale outsourcing of funds, which makes empty shells of asset management firms, is forbidden in France. “We will accept outsourcing up to 50%. And this outsourcing must clearly be justified as cases of a niche expertise which the asset management firm does not have. However, expertise has to remain internal,” Parain explains.

The European Commission has refused to approve a resolution plan at the banking group Dexia, which was submitted to it in late March by the Belgian, French and Luxembourg governments, Les Echos reports. Unlike its precedents at WestLB and Anglo Irish Bank, the plan was too eclectic in its mix of restructuring and orderly resolution, the European antitrust authority has found.

At the Deutsche Bank AGM on Thursday, Ingo Speich, a portfolio manager at Union Investment, announced that he would be voting agains the discharge to Clemens Börsig, chairman of the supervisory board at Deutsche Bank, in which the asset management firm for the German co-operative banks is one of the largest shareholders, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. He accuses Börsig of having poorly managed the succession of Josef Ackermann as chairman at the bank, and of appointing a chief risk officer who was rejected by BaFin.Union has also been critical of a lack of transparency in acquisitions by Deutsche Bank (Noris and Berliner Bank), and of making unfortunate investments in the United States, as Scudder was absorbed by DWS and must now be resold along with RREEF and all asset management activities in North America.According to the Börsen-Zeitung, a motion to discharge the supervisory board received only 77.7% of votes in favour.

The European financial and asset management association (EFAMA) on 31 May published the fifth edition of its annual atlas of the asset management sector in Europe (“Fith Annual Review Asset Management in Europe: Facts & Figures”), on the basis of statistics from the end of 2010.In addition to the usual statistics, the document underscores the importance of the sector and its role in the management of long-term savings and in financing the economy. Asset managers as of the end of 2010 controlled 23% of all debt issued in the euro zone, and 31% of corporate equities in the region.Institutional investors remain the largest category of clients for asset management firms, representing 69% of assets under management in Europe, of which 42% are managed for insurers, and 27% for pension funds. Meanwhile, the sector remains concentrated, as the three largest countries by asset volume – the United Kingdom, France and Germany – account for 65% of all assets under management in Europe.

“Our assets in Paris remain stable at over USD2bn, as at the end of 2011, but since then we have taken on a gross total of USD300bn and our subscriptions are positive overall,” Nicolas Bouët, deputy CEO for development at Invesco in Paris, explained on Thursday. Demand is coming mostly from institutional investors, as well as, to a lesser extent, from private banks and multi-managers.The Euro Corporate Bond fund was particularly popular with clients seeking income, as was the Balanced Risk Allocation fund for decorrelation and diversification.In terms of asset allocation, Barnard Aybran, deputy CEO for multi-management, reports that the wealth management time portfolio currently includes about 25% “safe heaven government bonds (US Treasuries, gilts and bunds), 40% investment grade corporate bonds and emerging market debt in local currencies, 15% equities, only 2.5% of them European (with the rest divided between Asia and US tech stocks), and the remainder, equivalent to about 20%, in cash and money market products.”

Thomas Idzorek, who is already CIO of Morningstar Investment Management, has been promoted to chairman of the Investment Management division of Morningstar, whose assets under management and advising total about USD190bn. Idzorek replaces Peng Chen, who leaves Morningstar at the end of June to return to Asia. The division in includes advised and managed assets, retirement solutions and management of investments in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.Idzorek joined Morningstar six years ago, when the group acquired Ibbotson Associates.

BNP Paribas Private Bank yesterday inaugurated its fourth regional wealth management office, in Toulouse, following offices in Bordeaux, Lille and Marseilles, Les Echos reports. Offices will open in Lyon in September and Rennes by the end of the year to complement these offices, dedicated to clients with assets of over EUR5m. A private bank has also been founded in Poland.

According to a survey by Greenwich Associates, institutional investors have reduced their spending in the twelve months to the end of March on research such as analysts notes and trading ideas by 9%, to USD6.2bn, the Financial Times reports.Hedge funds have been particularly severe with their reductions, with research spending as a proportion of brokerage commission budgets down 20%.

Axa IM has announced that it has finalised the production and distribution of 4,500 key investor information documents (KIIDs). This figure includes all the UCITS funds in the Axa IM Luxembourg ranges, notably AXA World Funds (AXA WF) and AXA IM Fixed Income Investment Strategies (FIIS), in addition to most of the funds covered by French law. The KIIDs for Axa IM’s UK and Irish ranges will be published in June 2012. “Axa IM is therefore on track to meet the 1 July 2012 deadline for the implementation of the KIID directive, including those for non-coordinated funds for which the regulator expects compliance by 1 July 2013,” a statement says. Axa IM rolled out its KIID compliance project in October 2010

After net redemptions of EUR5.4bn in first quarter, asset management at Axa will win back some strenght in the next few months. After EUR2.7bn in capital outflows as of the end of March, “Axa Investment managers will have positive inflows in first half,” Denis Duverne, deputy CEO for the French group, has told Agefi. AllianceBernstein (EUR2.7bn in outflows at the beginning of this year) is expecting to return to positive net inflows in third quarter.

Richard Titherington, CIO for emerging market equities at JPMorgan Asset Management in London, on Thursday announced at a presentation in Paris that the US asset management firm is planning to scale up its presence in Brazil, where it already has a small affiliate (USD50m) specialised in local bonds. The firm is now planning to build its holdings in Brazilian equities, which currently represent 15.2% of the portfolio of the Emerging Market Opportunities fund, compared with 14% in the MSCI Emerging Markets TR index. The product currently has USD437m in assets, in 61 holdings, and has seen inflows of about USD150m since the beginning of this year.

The BASF SE, Berkshire Hathaway, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, MacDonald’s and Qualcomm companies have joined the Dow Jones Global Titans 50 index, the index provider Dow Jones Indexes has announced. However, the five companies leaving the index include the German firm Allianz and the French BNP Paribas. The other three outgoing companies are E.ON, Hewlett-Packard and Petroleo.

According to reports in Fondsprofessionell, DWS has reached the minimal subscription level required for institutional (beta) and retail (alpha) share classes in its hydroelectric fund, DWS Access Wasserkraft (see Newsmanagers of 3 November 2011 and 10 April 2012). The Deutsche Bank affiliate is reported to have seen inflows of EUR30m in investment pledges for beta shares, and over EUR5m for alpha shares. The closure of subscriptions, which has already been postponed twice, is now set for 28 June.

On 25 May, DWS Investments (Spain) registered the German-domiciled bond fund DWS High Income Bond Fund (DE0008490913, EUR92.9bn in assets as of 30 May) with the CNMV. The fund invests in investment grade corporate debt from developed and emerging countries.

The 12th issue of the Global Wealth Report from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has found that the global financial wealth of retail investors in 2011 increased by only 1.9%, to USD122,800, after increases of 6.8% in 2010 and 9.6% in 2009. BCG suggest that wealth managers have to proactively find new ways to combat adverse trends if they want to improve their performance. Globally, the asset bases of 130 institutions (private banks or wealth management units of large universal banking groups) analysed by BCG remained flat in 2011, compared with a gain of 11% in 2010. The lack of growth was mainly attributable to the deterioration in market values, which was not offset by net new inflows.“But wealth managers will still need to continue their cost-cutting and pricing initiatives, refocus on client discovery, master the ever-shifting regulatory environment, bolster risk management, and find ways to use alternative business models to their advantage», the report says.The report finds that wealth managers will need to continue to reduce their costs and the price of their services, refocus on the identification of new clients, master a perpetually changing regulatory environment, build risk management, and find means to use different business models to their advantage.

The number of new funds launched will fall 30% in the next few years in Europe, according to a study by Cerulli Associates, cited by Citywire. This comes at a time when the region is suffering from an overabundance of funds, which are either too small, or of too poor quality. In 2011, the pace of new fund launches had already slowed, but fund closures have not yet returned to 2009 levels.

Nordea will be restructuring its Swedish “generations” range of funds, which will be reduced from 10 products to four, Privata Affärer reports. Eight funds, with 180,000 savings investors, will be merged in October. The funds affected are those aimed at savers born between 1950 and 1985.

Man Group is expected to be removed from the FTSE 100 at the next update of the index in June, Investment Week reports. The firm will reportedly be replaced by Babcock. Man Group, which has a market capitalisation of GBP1.305bn, has seen a fall in its share price during a difficult first quarter in which its AHL strategy underperformed.

Axa Investment Managers announced on Thursday the launch of Axa WF Global Strategic Bonds, a diversified and flexible global bond fund. The manager, Nick Hayes, will capitalise on what he considers to be the best alpha-generating opportunities available, throughout the macroeconomic cycle. «The fund will have a well diversified portfolio, leveraging from the best ideas from across the highly experienced AXA Fixed Income team and positioned as to where the fund manager sees value rather than benchmark lead», according to a press release.AXA WF Strategic Global Bonds Fund which launched on 11 May 2012 is UCITS III compliant and domiciled in Luxembourg. The Fund has both retail and institutional share classes with no minimum investment into the retail share class and EUR5 million into the institutional share class. The fund is not currently registered for sale in any other jurisdiction other than Luxembourg and AXA IM is considering registration across a number of countries in Europe.

Bernard Descreux, directeur de la division gestion d’actifs chez EDF dans un entretien paru dans Option Finance numéro 1175: Seule notre gestion obligataire sur les emprunts d’Etat, qui représente 5 milliards d’euros, est confiée à la salle de marché interne à EDF. Pour le reste, nos faisons appel à des gérants externes, à travers une centaine d’OPCVM ouverts ou dédiés, que nous sélectionnons à partir d’appels d’offres. Nous connaissons bien les gestionnaires d’actifs, en particulier français, mais nous donnons souvent une chance aux gérants étrangers ou même aux petits acteurs. Compte tenu de notre taille et des montants importants que nous confions, nos gérants doivent cependant avoir déjà un certain niveau d’encours, afin de respecter notamment le ratio d’emprise, qui détermine les montants maximum que nous pouvons investir en fonction de la taille d’un acteur. Actuellement, nous sommes en cours de consultation pour sélectionner des spécialistes sur les covered bonds. Nous étudions aussi la possibilité de sélectionner des gérants stand by, c’est à dire des gérants auxquels nous pouvons faire appel si nous souhaitons par exemple augmenter l’encours d’un mandat ou modifier le gérant principal. Cette technique déjà utilisée par le FRR ou l’Erafp permet notamment de challenger les gérants déjà en place. Au global, nous faisons appel aujourd’hui à une quarantaine de gestionnaires d’actifs. Nos relations avec eux s'établissent généralement sur le long terme, en moyenne au minimum pour trois à quatre ans, mais nous n’hésitons pas à nous séparer d’un gérant dont les performances seraient décevantes sur plusieurs mois.

Nous n’excluons pas le lancement d’un appel d’offres au cours de l’automne. Thierry Dissaux, le président du directoire du Fonds de garantie des dépôts, a confirmé à www.institinvest.com qu’un appel d’offres, concernant la totalité de la poche obligataire, soit un montant avoisinant les 400 millions d’euros, pourrait, sous certaines réserves, être lancé d’ici la fin de l’année. Le Fonds de Garantie des Dépôts (FGD) était resté en attente de directives de la Commission européenne susceptibles de modifier le cadre d’exercice des systèmes de garantie des dépôts. Toutefois, cette renégociation a pris du retard : le risque existe aujourd’hui que le texte ne sorte pas avant deux ans confirme le président du directoire. En attendant la remise à plat de sa gestion obligataire, le FGD a décidé de poursuivre sa politique de décorrélation vis-à-vis de son risque principal qui est, par construction, le secteur financier. Le Fonds envisage ainsi d’ajuster différents paramètres des mandats existants avant même le lancement éventuel d’un appel d’offres sur l’obligataire. Il ne s’agit bien sûr pas de notre part d’une quelconque défiance à l'égard du secteur bancaire, que nous connaissons bien, mais d’une saine politique de couverture de notre exposition. Nous allons encore resserrer les contraintes portant sur le secteur financier explique Thierry Dissaux. L’objectif premier du FGD demeure de maintenir un haut degré de liquidité et de sécurité. Pour ce faire, les investissements ne concernent que les classes d’actifs traditionnelles. Les 2 milliards d’euros d’encours sont répartis entre des fonds monétaires à court terme (75 % du portefeuille), de l’obligataire avec une duration inférieure à 3 ans (20 %) et une petite poche d’actions (5%). Le mouvement de décorrélation à l'égard du secteur financier a vocation à porter sur les trois classes d’actif.

L’opérateur boursier allemand, via sa filiale Eurex Clearing, va mettre en place une plate-forme de compensation des swaps de taux traités de gré à gré (OTC). Pour cela, le groupe s’associe à plusieurs acteurs bancaires: Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan et Morgan Stanley.

La banque d’investissement a annoncé le rachat de la totalité de sa coentreprise au Brésil, Signatura Lazard, ainsi que le recrutement d’Henrique Meirelles, président de la Banque centrale du pays de 2003 à 2010. Il prend la fonction de président de Lazard Americas. Basé à Sao Paulo, il sera chargé de conseiller la direction au sujet de projets internationaux majeurs, selon Lazard. La banque précise que les fondateurs de la coentreprise brésilienne en 2004, Marcelo Lyrio et Jean-Pierre Zarouk, continueront de diriger la manœuvre au Brésil. Haut responsable de la banque, Antonio Weiss assure que ces annonces soulignent la confiance portée par Lazard sur les opportunités présentes et futures du Brésil, à ses yeux l’une des économies les plus importantes et les plus dynamiques dans le monde.

L’indice PMI officiel d’activité du secteur manufacturier en Chine a chuté pour la première fois en six mois de 2,9 points à 50,4 en mai, contre 52,0 anticipé par le consensus Bloomberg, selon les chiffres publiés ce matin par le bureau des statistiques chinois. L’indice HSBC en mai a été confirmé à 48,4 points, son plus long séjour en zone de contraction depuis août 2008.

Après une décollecte nette de 5,4 milliards d’euros au premier trimestre, la gestion d’actifs d’Axa devrait retrouver des couleurs dans les prochains mois. Après 2,7 milliards de sorties de capitaux à fin mars, « Axa Investment Managers devrait avoir une collecte positive au premier semestre », a indiqué hier Denis Duverne, directeur général délégué du groupe français. Quant à AllianceBernstein, qui a aussi enregistré 2,7 milliards d’euros de décollecte en début d’année, « il faudra attendre le quatrième trimestre pour voir une collecte nette positive ». Nicolas Moreau, PDG d’Axa France, a dressé un premier bilan de son offre de dépendance individuelle, lancée début janvier. « Nous avons enregistré 6.000 affaires nouvelles, soit notre objectif annuel, a-t-il indiqué. Nous en visons désormais 20.000 pour 2012. » Engagé dans un plan d’économies de 500 millions d’euros d’ici 2015, il a également précisé que le groupe enregistrait 400 départs à la retrait par an et que « seule une personne sur deux serait remplacée ».

Le Paraguay est en phase de lancement de son premier marché à terme sur les changes, et le premier contrat devrait être traité dans les huit prochains mois, selon le quotidien qui cite la chambre de compensation argentine qui a aidé la Bourse du Paraguay dans son projet. Les contrats permettront d’échanger le guarani contre le billet vert.

Les épargnants ont transféré 66,2 milliards d'euros nets vers l'étranger le mois dernier et 97 milliards sur le premier trimestre, soit 10% du PIB

Les compagnies qui mènent des activités jugées non traditionnelles seront les premières concernées. Une liste sera publiée en 2013