Selon Asian Investor, Mirae Asset Securities distribue un fonds de private equity dédié aux technologies propres auprès des investisseurs institutionnels coréens pour le compte de Sustainable Asset Management (SAM, Robeco).Le Robeco-SAM Clean Tech Private Equity III fund espère lever quelque 500 millions de dollars dans le monde, dont 100 millions de dollars en Corée.

Le 14 octobre, Banif, la banque privée du Santander, a lancé quatre fonds de fonds profilés géré par Santander Asset Management qui ont été enregistrés auprès de la CNMV le 26 novembre et qui répliquent des portefeuilles déjà existants au Luxembourg.Le plus prudent, Banif Cartera Conservadora (ES0113444006) sera exposé au minimum à 80 % à des fonds obligataires ; il affiche des frais maximum de 3,75 % dont 1,1 % de commission de gestion, la différence correspondant à la commission de performance.Le produit équilibré, Banif Cartera Equilibrada (ES0113412003) investira au minimum à 40 % en fonds d’actions et affichera des frais de 3,75 %, dont 1,35 % de commission de gestion.Le fonds de fonds plus dynamique, Banif Cartera Selección (ES0113981007) pourra être exposé au maximum à) 95 % à des fonds d’actions (jusqu'à 30 % en fonds d’actions de pays émergents) et à 100 % à des fonds de haut rendement. Là aussi, les frais sont plafonnés à 3,75 %, dont 1,35 % de commission de gestion.Enfin le plus risqué, Banif Cartera Agresiva (ES0114021001) pourra être exposé jusqu'à 100 % eu risque de change ; il sera en temps normal investi au minimum à 40 % en fonds d’actions (30 % au maximum en actions de pays émergents) et au maximum à 60 % en fonds obligataires, sans limitations concernant les notations, et avec la possibilité d'être positionné jusqu'à 100 % en high yield, avec un maximum de 30 % pour les fonds d’obligations de pays émergents. Les frais sont plafonnés à 3,75 %, dont 1,35 % de frais de gestion.

Le gestionnaire madrilène Siitnedif annonce avoir enregistré au Luxembourg son premier hedge fund conforme à la directive OPCVM III, le Siitnedif Iberian Long/Short, une version coordonnée de son hedge fund Siitnedif Tordesillas. Ce produit sera lancé officiellement le 6 décembre.Fin septembre, la CNMV avait autorisé Siitnedif à fournir ses services dans tout l’Espace économique européen (lire notre dépêche du 30 septembre).Ce nouveau produit de performance absolue et à liquidité journalière vise un rendement de 10 % avec une volatilité inférieure à 8 %. La souscription minimale initiale est fixée à 1.000 euros.

SAM, la société de gestion spécialisée dans l’investissement durable, lance avec Dow Jones Index le Dow Jones Sustainability Nordic Index (DJSI Nordic). Le nouvel indice regroupe les meilleures grandes sociétés de la région nordique (30 %) sur des critères sociaux, environnementaux et de gouvernance. Il se compose ainsi de 29 sociétés du Danemark, Finlande, Norvège et Suède. Les cinq plus grandes valeurs de l’indice sont Novo Nordisk A/S Series B, Nokia, LM Ericsson Telephone Co. Series B, H&M AM Series B et Statoil ASA. L’indice est calculé en euros et dollars et sera remanié chaque année en septembre.

Selon IPE.com, BlackRock et State Street Global Advisors seraient les grands perdants de la réorientation de la stratégie du National Pension Reserve Fund irlandais après l’annonce selon laquelle le fonds de pension allait soutenir le sauvetage de l’Irlande avec un paiement de 10 milliards d’euros. A la fin de l’an dernier, BlackRock gérait quatre mandats représentant plus de 3 milliards d’euros. SSgA pèse quant à lui 2,3 milliards d’euros.

Le secrétaire d’Etat aux services financiers Mark Hoban a confirmé que l’impôt sur les banques britanniques rapporterait 2,5 milliards de livres par an, un montant déjà évoqué. Mark Hoban a également expliqué devant des parlementaires qu’il était «tout à fait exact» que Londres avait poussé l’introduction unilatérale d’un tel impôt, dans la mesure où cela ne portait pas atteinte à sa compétitivité.

L'économie polonaise a enregistré une croissance de 4,2% sur un an au troisième trimestre 2010, ce qui marque une accélération du rythme de hausse du produit intérieur brut du pays, qui avait progressé de 3,5% au trimestre précédent. Les analystes interrogés par Reuters avaient anticipé en moyenne une croissance de 3,6% sur un an pour la période juillet-septembre.

La société de gestion canadienne a conclu le rachat d’Acuity Funds pour 325 millions de dollars canadiens, nouvelle étape dans la consolidation du secteur de la gestion d’actifs après l’annonce du rachat de DundeeWealth par Bank of Nova Scotia. La nouvelle entité affichera environ 51 milliards de dollars canadiens d’actifs sous gestion.

L’institution confirme ainsi que les banques aidées et leurs créanciers doivent contribuer aux coûts de restructuration

La vitesse de propagation de la crise de la dette souveraine plaide pour des rachats d'actifs

La vitesse de propagation de la crise de la dette souveraine plaide pour des rachats d'actifs

La banque suisse et la société de gestion distribuent et gèrent Cadenza I, adossé à des CDS de dette corporate

L’indice Case-Shiller a reculé pour le troisième mois consécutif. Mais l’activité manufacturière envoie des signaux positifs

L’indice Case-Shiller s’est replié pour le troisième mois consécutif, au-delà des attentes. La fin des mesures d’incitation fiscale continue de peser.

La France mérite à l’heure actuelle la note AAA de sa dette souveraine, déclare le président de l’agence de notation Standard & Poor’s, Deven Sharma, dans un entretien accordé au quotidien. Il rappelle toutefois qu’aucun pays n’est à l’abri de perdre sa note AAA. La rumeur a couru hier que S&P pourrait placer la note française sous surveillance négative.

Alors qu’elle cherche à relancer les anticipations d’inflation, son président Ben Bernanke s’est inquiété d’une période de chômage prolongée

Les prix à la production ont augmenté de 0,8% en septembre en France, une progression supérieure aux attentes, montrent les statistiques publiées mardi par l’Insee. La hausse du mois de septembre a été confirmée à 0,3%.

Le taux d’inflation est resté inchangé à 1,9% sur un an en novembre dans la zone euro, un niveau conforme aussi bien aux attentes des économistes qu'à l’objectif de la Banque centrale européenne en termes de stabilité des prix. Eurostat a également souligné que le taux de chômage de la zone euro avait augmenté à 10,1% contre 10,0% en septembre.

Le risque de propagation de la crise de la dette souveraine aux pays périphériques de la zone euro continuait de peser sur les marchés européens et sur la monnaie unique, qui est passée un moment sous la barre de 1,30 dollar. Les coûts d’emprunt des pays périphériques poursuivent leur envolée au point d’atteindre, pour l’Espagne et l’Italie notamment, des niveaux inédits depuis l’entrée en vigueur de l’euro. La France est également affectée puisque l'écart de rendement entre le titre de dette française à dix ans et le Bund allemand de référence a augmenté dans la matinée de sept points de base à 58 pdb, son plus haut niveau depuis avril 2009.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } In January, RWC Partners is planning to launch a UCITS-compliant hedge fund, its first Irish-registered OEIC product, the RWC Macro Fund. It will be managed by Peter Allwright and Stuart Frost, who recently took over the day-to-day management of the RWS Cautious Absolute Rate and Currency (ARC) fund (see Newsmanagers of 2 November), and who were recruited from Threadneedle (see Newsmanagers of 1 July). The new product will replicate the strategy of the hedge fund Threadneedle Macro Trading Crescendo, which they managed from October 2008 to June 2010. It will be a Qualified Investment Fund (QIF). Dan Mannix, head of business development, says that RWC has chosen to domicile the fund in a Euro zone country in light of regulatory uncertainty about the sale of hedge funds. The RWC Macro Fund will be able to take advantage of opportunties which present themselves on all liquid markets, with a particular emphasis on fixed income and currencies, as well as equities and commodities indices.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The UK asset management firm Trafalgar Capital Management has announced the release of a long/short equity fund which complies with UCITS III requirements. The product, the Trafalgar Quadrant Fund, was launched on 1 May, and was licensed by the Irish regulator on 31 May. It carries a management commission of 2%, and a performance commission of 20%. The manager, Chris Poil, will focus on UK equities, and on cases of recovery. The objective is to generate absolute returns with a low correlation to equities markets, and low volatility. In order to achieve this, the portfolio will be highly diversified and net exposure to the market will be limited.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } In compliance with the decisions of general shareholders’ meetings held on 21 October, the Invesco US Equity Funds and Invesco Global Telecom Fund on 26 November were absorbed into the Invesco US Structured Equity Fund (LU0149503202, 1.36% TER ratio) and the Invesco Global Technology Fund (IE0003707928, TER of 2.53%), respectively.

One after another, Carmignac Gestion on Monday, 29 November announced two notable changes to its sales and marketing organisation on the European level as well as to its management team. In the first case, the management firm promoted David Fregonese to the position of director of European professional clients, with the main objective of strengthening the presence of Carmignac Gestion in continental Europe.Following the departure of Patrick Giry this spring, who previously served as CEO of the Luxembourg affiliate of the management firm and oversaw the European country heads, the firm, located in place Vendôme in Paris, announced that his position had been divided into two parts. One manager would take responsibility for the southern part of Europe, including France, Spain, and Italy, while another co-manager would be responsible for the northern part, including Benelux, Germany and Switzerland. At the time, Fregonese, who joined Carmignac Gestion in 2006, was given the position of director of professional clients in southern Europe.Officially, the structure was more complicated than expected. “It is a fact that we wanted to simplify the reading of our organisation by giving overall responsibility for professionnal sales in the registration countries to Fregonese,” Eric Le Coz, director of development, explains to Newsmanagers, adding that Fregonese will also be head of marketing. The objective is to better respond to the needs of sales teams and therefore of clients of the establishment. According to reports received by Newsmanagers, difficulties in recruiting an executive to take responsibility for northern Europe also led the firm to opt for a single-headed structure highly similar to the old model.Carmignac Gestion yesterday also announced another change, this one related to the departure of one of its most high-visibility managers, David Loggia. For personal reasons, the firm states, he chose to take a sabbatical leave for six months, in order to return to his family in Australia. He will return on 2 May 2011.In the meanwhile, “the management team will naturally work to replace the manager,” says a statement, and hence the arrival of Samir Essafri, an addition to the European equities management activities of the firm. Essafri, who was an analyst-manager on the Axa IM Framlington Conviction team, becomes co-manager of the CarmignaC Grande Europe fund, alongside Jordan Cvetanovski.Carmignac Gestion has also stated that the recruitment is not temporary by any means. “The pace of development of the management firm and the constant attention which we pay to the suitable size of our teams guarantees that Loggia will be able to find a place as a manager on his return to our management teams,” the firm states.

Gregory Park, who till last month was Asian head of covered products at Deutsche Bank, is now launching in Hong-Kong the Northstone Peak Capital Asia Credit Opportunity Fund which aims to raise some USD250m within six months, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports.The new product will be an hybrid between hedge and private equity funds which will mainly invests in convertible bonds and option bonds. It will specialise in the financing of consumer credit and consumer goods companies. Gregory Park hopes to reach USD2bn in AUM at a later stage.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Hong Kong-based real estate management firm Sniper Capital has announced the launch of a closed real estate fund with USD100m in assets, which will primarily focus on undervalued real estate in Macau outside the casino industry. Sniper has received commitments for the fund, the Macau Super Fund, of USD20m, and has invested USD5m in the fund. The Macau Sniper Fund aims for an internal return rate of at least 25%. Assets under management in the Sniper fund total USD300m, via two funds, including the Macau Property Opportunities Fund. The management firm has recently recruited a former Lehman Brothers employee, Joyce Lo, as head of investment strategy.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } “We inform you that as of the 9 November 2010, the Credem group is no longer authorised to sell Carmignac Gestion products.” So reads a statement in which the French asset management firm announced its “divorce” from the Italian bank, which was one of its largest distributors in Italy. The French asset manager as of July represented EUR1.2bn in assets, out of EUR17bn managed by Credem, Plus 24, the money supplement of Il Sole – 24 Ore reports. It all began in July 2010, when risk management at Credem triggered a call to divest from Carmignac funds, in order to comply with the MiFID directive, due to an overexposure on the part of some clients to products from the French management firms, particularly Patrimoine A. Financial advisors and clients were notified, but not Carmignac Gestion, in contravention of the terms of their contract, which led to the rupture of the contract between the two management firms. Since then, things appeared to have settled down between Credem and Carmignac Gestion, Plus 24 reports.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Jupiter Asset Management is offering two new funds on the French market. The Jupiter Strategic Total Return and the Jupiter Global Convertibles, created in 1 October 2010 (Newsmangaers of 28 September 2010), are sub-funds of the UCITS III-compliant Luxembourg Sicav Global Funds. All of the underlying strategies are promoted in France by Alfi Partners, which is aimed at professional investor clients. The two funds are jointly managed by Miles Geldard and Lee Manzi. The two funds were created to capitalise on the expertise of Miles and Lee in this area through a process that combines macroeconomic analysis with a top-down approach and quantitative and qualitative securities research.

Almost two-thirds of fund groups (65%) expect the use of performance fees on equity funds to rise again in 2011, according to research by Skandia Investment Group (SIG).The research - which is part of a broader study by SIG into the future of fund management, to be published on 6th December 2010 - reveals that many global asset management firms believe the use of performance fees will increase across a range of asset classes next year. Equity funds and absolute return vehicles are expected to see the greatest increases, with 65% and 50% of those surveyed predicting rises across these two classes respectively.The findings come at a time when the industry is also seeing investors change their focus from relative to absolute returns as a performance measure. While the figures show this is felt across the board, the biggest shift is among institutional investors (75%), compared with 58% of retail.The PRF-related figures mirror those of a similar study carried out by SIG last year. At that time the number of share classes available with PRFs for sale in the UK was 1,433, according to figures from Morningstar. This number is now 1,952 – a rise of 36%. The total number of share classes available for sale in the UK is currently 19,616.The findings also suggest that the introduction of more PRFs will be accompanied by a fall in fixed fees in some areas of the market, which the majority (58%) of respondents to the survey believe are under increasing pressure from the rise of passive products such as ETFs.The study, now in its second year, questioned 40 fund management groups with combined assets under management of over USD2 trillion. Based around the world, the groups were asked about their views on a range of areas and issues pertinent to the future of the asset management industry.

Like during the second quarter, fears about sovereign Euro-zone debt and doubts about China’s willingness to sacrifice growth to keep inflation low resulted in net outflows of USD5.6bn for equity funds surveyed by EPFR Global, Funds People reports. This was for the week to Novembrer 17th, while the funds had registered 22-week record inflows just the week before.

While refunds from its EUR6.3bn SEB ImmoInvest open-ended real estate fund are still suspended, SEB Asset Management announced it has strengthened its Frankfurt-based distribution team with the hire of Christian Hanke as head of institutional sales, real estate.The newcomer definitely knows how to deal with frozen funds, since he is coming from Aberdeen Asset Management Deutschland, where he was a senior business development manager for institutional sales after having acted as head of client management institutional at DEGI’s.DEGI had been bought by Aberdeen AM and both its open-ended real estate funds Europa (EUR1.3bn) and International (EUR1.7bn) are frozen. Aberdeen has actually decided to liquidate the Europa over a threee-year period (see Newsmanagers from October, 25th).