Oddo Asset Management se lance en Italie, selon Plus 24, le supplément «argent» de Il Sole – 24 Ore. La société de gestion française vient de faire agréer le fonds Avenir Europe et ouvre un bureau de représentation. Pour le moment, Oddo vise le marché institutionnel. L’année prochaine, le marché «retail» sera aussi ciblé.

Deux chercheurs de Genève ont étudié 10.000 hedge funds américains et européens. Selon Le Temps, il ont trouvé que le nombre de gérants capables de battre le marché est plus important que dans les fonds traditionnels, mais ils restent minoritaires. Et leur proportion varie de manière importante en fonction des stratégies et est généralement comprise entre 0% et 20%, contre 10 % dans la gestion traditionnelle, avant application des frais. Une fois les commissions soustraites de la performance, cette proportion tombe à 0,6 %.

La société de gestion GAM a annoncé, vendredi 6 mai, que le régulateur suisse, l’autorité fédérale de surveillance des marchés financiers (FINMA) autorise l’intégralité de sa gamme UCITS III à la distribution auprès des investisseurs suisses. Trois fonds en actions axés sur les thèmes de la technologie, du développement durable et de l‘inflation font donc leur apparition. Ces nouveaux fonds - GAM Star Global Equity Inflation Focus (ISIN: IE00B4M7MR78) ; GAM Star Geo (ISIN: IE00B5WLH375) et GAM Star Technology (ISIN: IE00B5THWW23) - ont été décrits sur Newsmanagers lorsqu’ils ont été agréés par le régulateur allemand (cf. article du 14/03/2011).

Au premier trimestre, les investisseurs ont alloué plus de 3,6 milliards de dollars aux hedge funds dédiés à l’Asie, selon Asian Investor. A cela s’est ajouté un effet marché qui a contribué à une augmentation nette des actifs de 4,6 milliards de dollars, ce qui a porté le montant des encours sous gestion à 88,1 milliards de dollars.La part de marché des hedge funds dédiés à l’Asie basés en Chine et à Hong Kong dépasse désormais celle des Etats-Unis, avec une part de 26,29% pour les premiers contre moins de 25% pour les seconds.

According to the most recent monthly estimates by BNY Mellon Asset Management, the average coverage rate for corporate pension funds was up 0.8% in April, at 89.2%. This is the eighth consecutive month of improvement, BNY Mellon AM reports. Since the beginning of the year, the coverage rate has risen 4.9 percentage points. In April, the US stock markets posted a 2.6% increase, while pension fund liabilities increased by only 1.8%.

Fidelity would like to increase the fees charged to subscribers to its oldest fund, Mutual Find Wire reports. The Fidelity Fund, launched in April 1930, has USD6.1bn in assets. Currently, the fund charges 61 basis points, of which 35 basis points go to management. The US management firm would like to increase the management fees to 56 basis points, and add a performance fee (+/- 21 basis points, depending on outperformance or underperformance compared with the S&P 500).

The US management firm Glboal X Funds has launched what it says is the first ETF in the world of Mexican small caps, entitled Global X Mexico Small-Cap ETF.

Financial News reports that Tim Russell has left his job as director for pan-European equities at Cazenove Capital Management. As a result, Chris Rice will replace him, while Steve Cordell will manage the British long/short products at the asset management firm.

Baring Asset Management has announced the recruitment of Steven Carter, formerly of Aberdeen Asset Management, as head of data management, and Hohn Poole as head of fund services. The two new recruits will be based in London.

With a team of four founding partners, Jacques Lucas, chairman, Philippe de Gouville, head of management, Jean-Guillaume Grebet, head of research, and Thomas Dubreuil, head of sales, the alternative management firm Exqim develops arbitrage strategies based on a quantitative approach, which is systematic and completely automated. The firm has recently launched its first fund, the Exqim Blue Fund.

Björn Robens, the new CEO, has told Handelsblatt that BHF-Bank has attracted EUR500m since the beginning of this year, despite uncertainty about its future (Deutsche Bank has recently called off plans to sell the firm to LGT). The activity has remained stable, and there have been no departures of directors from the private bank and asset management, Robens says.

At the end of first quarter, the number of new Riester state-subsidized unit-linked retirement savings policies totalled nearly 2.85 million, according to the BVI association of German management firms. In twelve months, assets have increased from EUR5.6bn to EUR7.6bn.

Clive Capital, the world’s largest commodity hedge fund which manages USD5bn, has lost more than USD400m as a result of the collapse in the price of oil last week, according to the Financial Times. Clive said it was down 8.9 per cent last week. The management of the firm said it was at a loss to explain what had caused crude oil markets to be “annihilated”.

As an addition to its range of funds dedicated to emerging markets, Martin Currie is planning to launch a fund dedicated to India, FundWeb reports. The Indian market is highly attractive for a stock-picking approach, John Pickard, an investment head at Martin Currie, says, and the young population in the country means that strong increases in consumer spending are to be expected.

At a presentation in Paris on 5 May, Avi Lavi, CIO for European value equities at AllianceBernstein, sought to demonstrate to his audience that the time is now favourable for a value approach, following the market transformations of the past decade, particularly as, following the crisis, investors are once again hungry for equities, particularly “value” style equities, which are as inexpensive as in the late 1970s, but with much lower interest rates. They often offer dividend yields higher than those of bonds from the same issuer, while many groups are virtually swimming in liquidity, which leaves a margin to be redistributed to shareholders. AllianceBernstein is so convinced of the correctness of its approach, that it has recently entered the amLeague championship (see Newsmanagers of 14 January) to gain visibility among institutional investors, Olivier Herson, vice president for France, adds. The stock-picking process (bottom-up) undertaken by AllianceBernstein managers involves identifying blind spots and taking advantage of behavioural biases, and then undertaking further management, with about 75% active bets for the European Strategic value of, with EUR113m in assets, and the Eurozone Strategic Value fund, with EUR45m. They are currently betting on special situations (restructuring, mergers, spin-offs), the Euro zone crisis, including the banking sector, and on sustainable recovery, with major industrial sector businesses which have been unjustly undervalued. In terms of the price to book ratio (P/B), at 1.2 for the European Value, and multiples (P/E), at 9 times, the portfolio of the European Value fund is much «cheaper» than the market generally. In addition, Lavi claims, the 17 products of the value range (a strategy which represents a total of EUR81bn) all have earned positive annualised returns since their inception. The 10 value portfolios domiciled in Luxembourg have about EUR2bn in assets. The Paris office has about EUR2.5bn in assets, of which about 60-70% is in credit. The equities products which have been most popular so far have been the Asia, Japan and United States funds. Herson’s objective is now to build up the European value equities product range, which represents only about EUR70m in mandates, and about EUR90m in funds.

Pierre Galitzine has joined Swan Capital Management as head of asset allocation, as an addition to the asset management team specialised in stock-picking. Alitzine, 57, has been specialised in macroeconomic analysis for 30 years, and has worked with the group Cecogest, and with Marc de Scivitaux at Cahiers verts de l’économie, a statement says. Galitzine has also had a career as a portfolio manager, and helped to found the asset management firm Optigestion.

The BlackRock Solutions unit at BlackRock has become an indispensable actor for the US government, which is seeking to unload distressed assets it accumulated during the financial crisis, the Wall Street Journal reports. For example, on Wednesday, the entity helped the Federal Reserve to auction off subprime mortgages acquired from AIG in 2008. In total, BlackRock Solutions has helped the Fed to sell securities with a face value of over USD5.38bn.

Two researchers in Geneva has studied 10,000 US and European hedge funds. Le Temps reports that they found that the number of managers capable of beating the market is much higher than for traditional funds, but that they are still in the minority. And the percentage of managers who can do so varies significantly depending on the strategies used, generally ranging from 0% to 20%, compared with 10% for traditional management, after fees. Once performance commissions are taken into account, the percentage falls to 0.6%.

In first quarter, investors allocated more than USD3.6bn to hedge funds dedicated to Asia, Asian Investor reports. In addition to that, market effects contributed to a net increase in assets of USD4.6bn, bringing total assets under management to USD88.1bn. The market share for hedge funds dedicated to Asia and based in China and Hong Kong now exceeds those in the United States, with a 26.29% market share for the former, compared with less than 25% for the latter.

EFAMA will this Monday unveil a code for good governance in the asset management industry, Financial Times Fund Management reports. The document will include recommendations to stimulate engagement practices.

The German federal financial services supervisory authority (BaFin) has issued a license to Feri EuroRating Services as a European rating agency. Feri says that it is one of only three ratings agencies in Europe which have received the license so far, in keeping with European Community directives (the other ones are the Japan Credit Rating Agency, licensed by the French watchdog, AMF, and Euler Hermes, licensed by the BaFin). The registration is valid for the entire European Union, for credit ratings, a sector in which Feri has been providing country ratings of sovereign debt for over 20 years. The European directive for the first time makes rating agencies subject to state supervision. In addition to its headquarters in Bad Homburg in Germany, Feri EuroRatings has offices in London, Paris and New York.

Oddo Asset Management is entering Italy, Plus 24, the money supplement of Il Sole – 24 Ore reports. The French asset management firm has licensed the Avenir Europe fund and opened a representative office in the country. For now, Oddo is targeting the institutional market. Next year, the retail market will also be targeted.

The management firm GAM announced on Friday, 6 May that the Swiss Federal financial market surveillance authority (FINMA) has authorised its complete UCITS III product range for sale to Swiss investors. Three equities funds focused on the themes of technology, sustainable development and inflation will now be released. The new funds – GAM Star Global Equity Inflation Focus (ISIN: IE00B4M7MR78), GAM Star Geo (ISIN: IE00B5WLH375), and GAM Star Technology (ISIN: IE00B5THWW23) – were described by Newsmanagers when they received licenses from the German regulator (see Newsmanagers of 14/03/2011).

La Mutuelle MAE (Mutuelle Accidents Elèves) a choisi de confier un mandat de gestion diversifié à EGAMO. La signature du mandat a eu lieu le 2 mai 2011 dans les locaux d’EGAMO en présence d’Edgard Mathias (président de la Mutuelle MAE) et de Fabrice Henry (président d’EGAMO). Créée en 1932 par des enseignants, la Mutuelle MAE s’est imposée comme le spécialiste de la protection de l’enfant. Elle propose de nombreux contrats d’assurances mutualistes adaptées aux besoins des enfants et de leurs parents. De l’assurance des tout petits jusqu’aux protections pour les étudiants, des contrats individuels et habitation pour les jeunes actifs jusqu'à l’assurance familiale, la Mutuelle MAE est reconnue comme leader de l’assurance scolaire et extrascolaire depuis près de 80 ans. L’offre de gestion personnalisée d’EGAMO, assortie d’un service d’accompagnement global sur l’ensemble des problématiques de ses clients mutualistes, lui ont permis d'être sélectionnée par la Mutuelle MAE pour la gestion de ses placements financiers.

Le ministre de l’Energie irlandais s’est dit personnellement favorable à ce que la dette émise dans le cadre du plan de sauvetage de l’Union européenne et du Fonds monétaire international soit rééchelonnée. «Les taux d’intérêt (du prêt accordé à l’Irlande) doivent être abaissés et, de mon point de vue, la dette doit être restructurée», a déclaré Pat Rabbitte à la chaîne RTE.

Le groupe de services australien a indiqué avoir rejeté une offre le valorisant à 657 millions de dollars australiens (490 millions d’euros) émanant d’une société de private equity, qu’il n’a pas nommé. Reuters croit savoir de source proche que le prétendant n’est autre que Blackstone.

130 millions de livres, c’est l’enveloppe que peuvent se partager les gérants londoniens du fonds KKR après une hausse des bénéfices. Une rémunération en hausse de 85% par rapport à celui de l’année précédente, selon le Sunday Telegraph qui rapporte l’information, et qui comprend 29,2 millions de livres en cash et 100,8 millions de livres en actions.

Sabine de Lépinay, responsable de la gestion monétaire chez Robeco Gestions

Christian Parisot, responsable de la recherche économique chez Aurel BGC

Malik Haddouk, responsable de la gestion diversifiée de CPR Asset Management