Emerging market debt funds’ performance has been heterogeneous and shows a lack of persistency, according to Fitch Ratings. Only 11% of funds stay in first or second quartile performance in both the periods 2005-2008 and 2008-2011. Worse, around 20% of funds moved from top quartile to bottom quartile (and vice versa) over the same periods. «The lack of consistency in performance reflects fund managers’ difficulties in adapting style and exposure to changing market regimes: EMD funds investments remain a beta play,» says Manuel Arrive, senior director in Fitch’s Fund and Asset Manager Rating team. Flows to emerging market debt funds have been solid in 2011 attracting USD28bn (and USD13bn for the first two months of 2012), pushing the sector’s assets under management to USD279bn as at the end of February 2012, according to Fitch. Local currency funds attracted about 64% of the flows in 2011. Emerging market debt benchmarked funds dominate the sector, with absolute return funds representing just 3% of total assets under management. Fitch expects to see more multi-strategy funds (absolute return or blended currency) or specialised corporate funds being launched in the next few months.

DWS Investment (Deutsche Bank group) has had to freeze redemptions of its ImmoFlex Vermögensmandat fund of funds, with assets of EUR101.5m. Five other funds of this type have already been required to do likewise, as eight open-ended real estate funds are now in the liquidation process, and six others have recently announced that they are extending redemption freezes. As the DWS ImmoFlex Vermögensmandat is largely invested in open-ended real estate funds whose redemptions are suspended, the available liquidity is not sufficient to meet redemption demands, except by selling off assets at a loss and a disadvantage to shareholders. Overall, the DWS ImmoFlex Vermögensmandat is invested in 10 open-ended real estate funds, which hold about 500 properties.

Union Investment Real Estate (UIRE) has sold the Luisacenter shopping centre in Darmstadt (19,000 square metres) to LaSalle Investment management for about EUR104m. UIRE bought the property in December 2003. Management of the shopping centre will continue to be provided by ECE.A statement says UIRE took advantage of an attractive moment to sell the property, which belongs to a category currently in strong demand from investors.

Deutsche Börse announced on 2 April that four German-registered ETFs of the iShares brand have been admitted to trading on the XTF segment of the Xetra electronic trading platform. The XTF segment now lists 956 funds. Three new funds replicate S&P indices of commodity producers, while the fourth tracks an MSCI index of industrial shares. Characteristics Name: iShares S&P Commodity Producers GoldISIN code: DE000A1JS9D8Benchmark index: S&P Commodity Producers Gold IndexTER: 0.55%CharacteristicsName: iShares S&P Commodity Producers Oil & GasISIN code: DE000A1JS9C0Benchmark index: S&P Commodity Producers Oil & Gas Exploration & Production IndexTER: 0.55%CharacteristicsName: iShares S&P Commodity Producers AgribusinessISIN code: DE000A1JS9B2Benchmark index: S&P Commodity Producers Agribusiness IndexTER: 0.55%CharacteristicsName: iShares MSCI ACWIISIN code: DE000A1JS9A4Benchmark index: MSCI All Country World IndexTER: 0.60%

Tradewinds Global Investors, an affiliate of Nuveen Investments, has seen a further setback with the departure of its chief investment officer, David Iben, Pensions & Investments reports. Fundamentals improved at Tradewinds last year, thanks to a net inflow of USD13bn. But with the departure of Iben, Nuveen will have a lot of trouble putting an exit strategy at Tradewinds into practice, as the firm has debts of over USD4bn, after an LBO in 2007.

Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking (SG CIB) on 2 April announced a reshuffle and apopintments which particularly affect Lyxor Asset Management, which is now directly under the direction of SG CIB. This development allows Lyxor Am to “continue its development as a top-raking asset management firm in the areas of alternative management, ETFs, structured and quantitative management,” a statement says, adding that Inès de Dinechin, CEO of Lyxor AM, is joining the extended executive committee at SG CIB. Richard Paolantonacci, head of the newly-created Management of Rare Resources department, Vincent Mortier, CFO, and Sylvie Préa, director of human resources, are also newly-appointed. The Financing and Investment Bank will continue to be organised around its three major professions: investment banking, financing, and market activities. In these three divisions, SG CIB is making the following changes and appointments, effective from 2 April: In the Client Relations and Investment Banking division, led by Thierry Aulagnon and his deputy, Diony Lebot: two new departments are created, including Primary Equity Capital Markets and Merger and Acquisition Advising activities, and dedicated to client segments. A department of Corporate Finance, led by Thierry d’Argent, offers major clients of the bank a complete range of services from origination to execution. Luis Vaz Pinto and Olivier Buttier are appointed as deputies. A Financial Institutions department, led by Pierre-Yves Bonnet, will include a ream of bankers serving financial institutions. In the Global Finance division, led by Pierre Palmieri and his deputies, Slawonir Krupa and David Coxon: an organisation oriented to distribution and favouring synergies. Creation of a Financing professional area, led by Matthew Vickerstaff. This professional area includes Infrastructure and Asset Financing, Expore Financing and Debt Optimisation. Creation of an Energy and Natural Resources professional area, co-directed by Federico Turegano and Jonathan Whitehead. The professional area includes the Financing activities in the Energy sector, Commodity Trading, Metals and Mines, and will work closely with the team in Commodities Markets in the Market Activities division. Creation of a Capital Markets professional area, led by Patrick Ménard and his deputy, Jean-Marc Giraud. This professional area includes the Capital Markets Finance (securitisation and capital structuring) activities, Capital Debt Markets, Ratings Advising, Leveraged Financing and Media & Telecom, Strategic Acquisition Financing and Financial Engineering. In the Market Activities division, led by Dan Fields: Fixed Income activities are scaled up. Creation of a Fixed Income & Currencies professional area, created by merging the Fixed Income, Treasury and Fixed Income and Currency Derivatives, led by Danielle Sindzingre. For commodity market activities, Jonathan Whitehead has been appointed Head of these activities in the Market Activities division, assisted by François Combes and Jean-François Maurey.

The board of directors at DekaBank (central asset management firm for the German savings banks) on 2 April appointed Georg Stocker as a board member. He will be responsible for distribution to savings banks and treasuries, and succeeds Hans-Jürgen Gutenberger, who is retiring. From 2004, Stocker had been a member of the board at the Frankfurter Sparkasse, and became its vice president in 2009.

On 2 April, BNP Paribas Germany announced that Stefan Hartl, head of external distribution at BNP Paribas Investment Partners in Germany, has been promoted to the position of managing director of the wealth management-key clients unit at BNP Paribas.Hartl, who had previously worked at Schroders, where he had been responsible for German institutional clients, replaces Pascal Gundrich, who is now in charge of assisting wealth management key accounts at BNP Paribas in Luxembourg.

In a nine-line statement, the DSGV federation of German savings banks on 2 April announced that it is immediately relieving Franz S. Waas of his responsibilities as a member and chairman of the board at DekaBank, the second-largtest German asset management firm. The savings banks now control the entirety of capital in the firm, in which the Landesbanken had held half until last year. The decision, taken the day before a press conference at Deka to announce results, is officially motivated by the fact that “the necessary relationship of confidence no longer existed, due to a lawsuit over additional bonuses filed by the party in relation to his first term in the position, in 2008-2009.” The board of directors at DekaBank has appointed Oliver Behrens as interim chairman of the board.

Florian Uleer, who had been head of banking and business clients for “A deposits” at Union Investment Institutional, has joined Schroders Germany as head of distribution for banks and funds of funds, replacing Alexander Prawitz.Prawitz has been transferred to the global financial solutions group Asia in Hong Kong, to assist international and local banking clients as well as strategic distribution partners.Uleer will report to Joachim Nareike, director of distribution at Schroders Investment Management GmbH.

Rob Jones, formerly of Threadneedle, who joined Union Bancaire Asset Management (UBAM), an affiliate of UBP, 20 months ago as co-head of European equity, has been appointed by the firm to manage the new UBAM Equity Europe Dividend +, which will pay an annual return of 10% over a sliding 5-year period, using a covered call strategy to reduce volatility and increase revenues, Citywire reports. The fund will have a concentrated portfolio of about 22 positions, on securities selected for the sustainability of their dividends. The objective will be to generate returns of 5% per year for the equity portfolio, while exposure to derivatives is expected to bring in a net gain of about 6%.

Last year, the Chinese asset management sector, affected by a 22% drop on the Shanghai stock exchange, underwent cumulative losses of over RMB500bn, or over USD79bn, Asian Investor reports. 28 asset management firms have posted losses of over RMB10bn, including AMC, with losses of over RMB43.7bn, E Fund (RNB34.7bn), and Harvest (RMB28.7bn). Statistics reveal that 812 mutual funds out of 970 finaished the year with losses, including equity funds (RMB314.7bn) and diversified funds (RMB152.3bn). The largest Chinese mutual fund, Harvest CSI 300 LOF, whose assets under management total slightly over RMB27bn (as of 29 March), has lost RMB7.35bn. Only money market and guaranteed funds posted gains last year, with cumulative gains of RMB5.8bn for the former and of RMB25.6bn for the latter.

Activity has been lively in March, but for first quarter as a whole, initial public offerings have raised only USD16.2bn, the lowest amount observed since 2009, according to statistics from Bloomberg. In fourth quarter 2011, IPOs represnted a total of USD28.8bn, and in first quarter 2011, total IPOs measured USD48.4bn. Renaissance Capital observes that expected IPOs in the United States are close to their highest level in over 10 years. However, in recent weeks, some interest in activity in the United States, Asia and Europe has returned. In the United States, nine companies raised USD1.4bn in the week to 30 March.

Nearly half of all European Union member states, 13 out of 27, have not yet adopted national legislation to comply with the tax dispositions of the UCITS IV directive, according to an updated version of a study published by KPMG in 2010 entitled “UCITS IV – Fill the glass to the brim: Have we broken through?” Hedge Week reports. Among the countries which would have been required to transpose the directive by 1 July 2011 are Belgium, Cyprus, Greece, and Portugal.

The Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA), the global hedge fund trade association, in 2 April expressed concern about the European Commission’s new draft text for the implementation of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) (see Newsmanagers of 30 March). In response to the recommendations by the European Securities Markets Authority (ESMA), the Commission has developed a text in the form of a regulation, which may be applied more quickly than a directive. The Commission has given member states and the Parliament two weeks to react to the new bill. According to the director general of the AIMA, Andrew Baker, the Commission’s bill appears to “to significantly and substantially diverge” from ESMA’s proposals on a number of key points, such as the responsibility of the depository, outsourcing, and outside countries. “We fully respect the Commission’s right not to follow ESMA advice when producing secondary legislation. However, there should be more transparency and better consultation if the Commission has decided to depart from the advice in such crucial areas for the global asset management industry.” The professional association invites the Commission to state its point of view on the terms concerning outside countries, where it does not appear to follow ESMA’s recommendations. According to the Commission, European and non-European regulators should sign legally binding bilateral cooperation agreements. This would be very problematic or impossible to put into practice if regulations stipulate that cooperation agreements require that regulators in outside countries apply European legislation in their respective territories.

Following a loss of 29% in one day for the Velocity Shares Daily 2x Long VIX Short-Term ETN from Credit Suisse, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has announced that it is investigating the entire ETN segment, the Börsen-Zeitung reports.

The US auto maker general Motors now controls 7% of capital and 5.78% of voting rights in PSA Peugeot Citroën, the French financial market authority (AMF) reported on 2 April. The AMF reports that GM acquired the position via a subscription to 20.4 million shares in a capial increase at Peugeot, and an off-market acquisition on the same date, of nearly 4.4 million shares from the French auto maker. Peugeot announced in late February that it was forming a strategic alliance with GM, which would have called for an entry into its capital of 7% and a capital increase of EUR1bn.

The board of directors at the US pension fund and foundation council CII (Council of Institutional Investors) has elected Anne Simpson as a member of its board. Simpson has worked for the Californian pension fund CalPERS since 2009 as director of corporate governance. She worked to promote corporate governance at the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN) and the World Bank. She is a visiting professor at Yale.

For new structured bank notes from BNP Paribas, Morningstar is providing three Ultimate Stock-Pickers indices, the Ultimate Stock-Pickers, Ultimate Stock-Pickers Target Volatility 7 and Ultimate Stock-Pickers Target Volatility 10, for which the French bank has acquired a license.Morningstar in April 2009 began to study quarterly portfolios, purchases and sells by 26 star managers, the “ultimate stock-pickers.” The shares selected are then subjected to independent research by Morningstar in order to determine a conviction score; the shares with the best results are added to the index.The volatility 7 and 10 indices are constructed in the same way, but with an effort to control volatility by transferring from and to positions on cash in order to maintain standard deviations at 7 and 10, respectively. These indices are rebalanced on a monthly basis.

The CNMV on 30 March issued a license for the BBVA Solidez XVI BP fund, a product which is set to mature on 28 December 2015, and which guarantees a redemption of 110.473% of its net asset value as of 27 April 2012, which represents an annual return of 2.75%.Subscriptions are open until 27 April; returns are lower than for the BBVA Solidez XV, which pays 3%.CharacteristicsName: BBVA Solidex XVI BP, FIISIN code: ES0110017003Minimal subscription: EUR50,000Front-end fee: 5%Management commission: 0.85%Penalty for early withdrawal: 1%

Henderson Global Investors on 2 April announced that it has opened an office dedicated to real estate in Sweden, with the recruitment of Johan Aström as head of real estate, based in Stockholm. The recruitment marks a desire on the part of Henderson Property to develop its activities in Scandinavian countries and to profit from the dynamic created by the recent acquisition of a shopping centre in Sweden. Aström had previously worked as a manager at Nordic Real Estate Partners.

Jeremy Soulter, global head of products at Aviva Investors, has left the business following a restructuring, Investment Week reports. His duties will be taken over by the product strategy and product development teams.

Martin Gilbert, CEO of Aberdeen Asset Mangement, has sold GBP771,000 worth of shares in the firm, with the proceeds of the sale to be reinvested in funds managed by Aberdeen, Investment Week reports. Assets at Aberdeen as of 29 February totalled GBP184.4bn, compared with GBP173.9bn as of the end of December 2011.

EFG Private Bank, the British affiliate of WFG International, has appointed Daniel Gerber as Managing Director and Head of Private Banking, effective from 2 July 2012. Gerber will chair the management committee and the board of directors at EFG Private Bank, according to a statement published on 2 April. Gerber will report to Anthony Cooke-Yarborough, CEO of the affiliate of EFG International for the United Kingdom and the Channel Islands, which includes EFG Private Bank, EFG Harris Allday and EFG Independent Financial Advisers. Gerber previuosly served as Chief Executive Officer at Julius Baer International in London.

Investment Week reports that Standard Life Investments (SLI), seeking to focus on its range of actively-managed funds, has sold its range of six OEIC tracker funds to Vanguard Asset Management. In addition, SLI will be closing the Unit Linked UK Equity Tracker Fund from Standard Life Insurance. Assets in the fund transferred to Vanguard nearly all come from Standard Life.

M&G Investments announces that Phil Cliff, who joined M&G in January 2012 from Threadneedle, assumes management of the M&G Pan European Dividend Fund as of Monday.His appointment frees up the incumbent manager Richard Halle, who has been managing both the M&G European Strategic Value Fund and the M&G Pan European Dividend Fund, to concentrate full time on his European value portfolios.The M&G Pan European Dividend has EUR27,07 million assets under management as of 29 February 2012.

Luis Martín, who had belonged to the sales team at J.P. Morgan Asset Management in Spain, has joined BlackRock as director of retail and institutional sales for the Iberian market, Funds People reports.Martín will report to Armando Senra, CEO of BlackRock Iberia and Latin America, and Dominik Rohe, head of retail and institutional in the same regions.BlackRock manages about USD49bn in the Iberian peninsula and Latin America. The group has recently confirmed the appointment of Alex Hoctor-Duncan as head of retail for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, replacing Maarten Slendebroek, who has moved to Jupiter (see Newsmanagers of 2 April).

PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory has sought to put a figure on the consequences of the UCITS IV directive on the six major Italian (or Italian-registered) groups, which manage a total of EUR231bn at 42 asset management firms affiliated to them, Plus24, the wealth supplement of Il Sole – 24 Ore reports. This represents 1,101 funds, of which 21% are Italian-registered, 54% are Italian but registered abroad, and 25% are foreign. PwC finds two potential outcomes. One is that six group will retain one asset management firm each in Italy or abroad. There would then be an 83% reduction in the number of asset management firms, from 42 to 7. In the second case, the six groups might merge asset management firms in countries of reference and specialist centres (Luxembourg and Ireland). Then, the reduction in the number of asset management firms would be 50%. This development would take place over three years, and PwC predicts that there would be a parallel reduction of 30% in the number of funds, from 1,010 to 731.

Laurent Gorgemans, head of multi-management at Dexia Asset Management in Luxembourg, is leaving the firm where he has spent six years. The reports in Citywire Global have been confirmed to Newsmanagers by a spokesperson for the asset management firm. “Laurent Gorgemans, who has had a fruitful collaboration with us for over 6 years, has chosen to leave Dexia Asset Management for personal reasons,” an official statement says. “The decisions of our multi-management strategists will not be affected by the departure. It remains in line with our principle of having dedicated and specialised teams which are responsible for decisions. The multi-management team, with 12 analyst/managers including 4 senior managers for fund selection and management of traditional funds of funds, continues to report to Fabrice Cuchet, global head of alternative investments,” the statement adds. Gorgemans arrived at Dexia AM in September 2005, according to his LinkedIn profile. He had previously been head of funds of funds at Fortis Investments. The departure from Dexia AM comes a few days after the announcement of the departure of Frédéric Buzaré, who since 2007 had served as global head of equities and then as equity strategist, before joining the Singapore sovereign fund GIC.

Proposées par les BFI, et dans une moindre mesure par les asset managers, les options de couverture des risques permettent de réduire l’exigence de fonds propres. La Sham a étudié des scénarios où un risque important se matérialise sur ses actifs. Elle souhaite construire elle-même (avec l’aide d’un consultant en finance) des stratégies de couverture, « mais nous ne les avons pas encore mises en ??uvre car aujourd’hui tout le monde cherche à se protéger contre les mêmes risques (baisse brutale du marché actions, hausse brutale des taux obligataires ), ce qui rend les couvertures très chères » note Dominique Godet, le directeur général de la Sham. Sur les produits structurés, les asset managers proposent des offres proches de celles des BFI. Ces produits financiers effrayent certains investisseurs : « Des banques ou des asset managers nous proposent des produits structurés qui sont moins consommateurs en fonds propres que les actifs sous-jacents, décrit Dominique Godet. Ce type de produits ne m’intéresse pas car le risque intrinsèque demeure. Si un sous-jacent me coûte trop cher en fonds propres, je préfère y renoncer. »