La Fondsbörse Hamburg admet à la négociation ce lundi 6 septembre les parts du nouveau BE Dynamic Fund (LI0113711308), un exchange traded investment (ETI) de la société de gestion liechtensteinoise Minerva Investments. Ce produit bénéficiant d’un agrément de commercialisation en Autriche et en Allemagne se concentrera principalement (au moins à 70 %) sur les 5 à 8 actions les plus prometteuses cotées à la Bourse de Vienne ensuivant à 75 % au moins celles du portefeuille modèle de Styria Börse Express, a indiqué Andreas Wölfl, directeur général de Minerva et gérant initial du fonds.Le nouvel ETI est un compartiment du véhicule «Minerva Structured Investments». Durant la première semaine (6-10 septembre) les parts seront traitées à Hambourg avec un «hot spread» maximal de 50 points de base, ce qui permettra aux investisseurs d'économiser le droit d’entrée.Par ailleurs, Andreas Wölfl a annoncé dans un communiqué boursier que chacun des investissements sera commenté sous un délai très court par le gestionnaire sur le site Internet autrichien Börse Express, un reporting hedbdomadaire étant par ailleurs prévu à l’adresse http://www.be24.at.Les ETI sont des fonds dont les parts sont cotées en Bourse mais qui ne sont pas coordonnés, ce qui leur permet d'être investis en produits alternatifs et de ne pas être assujettis en permanence aux normes de diversification des risques ; les ETI peuvent également utiliser l’effet de levier. Le prospectus est établi en conformité avec la directive européenne.
Le prestataire de services financiers eFonds Group, contrôlé entre autres à 27,98 % chacun par MPC Capital et HCI Capital, a annoncé qu’il propose depuis le 1er septembre des produits de valeurs mobilières provenant de Deutsche Bank Privat Wealth Management ainsi que des plans de prévoyance retraite et des contrats Riester du gestionnaire de fonds DWS Investments (également du groupe Deutsche Bank).Cela vient étoffer l’offre de la plate-forme All Round Finance d’eFonds qui propose déjà à ses quelque 2.500 CGPI adhérents des produits et solutions de l’Augsburger Aktienbank, de CortalConsors, d’eBase et de la DAB Bank.
BNY Mellon a annoncé avoir bouclé l’acquisition de la société indépendante de conseil en gestion de fortune I3 Advisors. Cette transaction, modeste en termes d’actifs conseillés (un peu plus de 3,8 milliards de dollars canadiens), n’en constitue pas moins la première acquisition au Canada de BNY Mellon sur le segment de la gestion de fortune.BNY Mellon a maintenu dans ses fonctions le patron de I3 Advisors, June Ntazinda qui est directement rattaché à don Heberle, executive vice president de BNY Mellon Wealth Management responsable des activités internationales.
JPMorgan Asset Management a annoncé la création d’un nouveau centre régional pour l’Asie du Sud à Singapour, rapporte le Financial Times Fund Management. Roger Hepper, le COO de JPMAM basé à Hong Kong, devient également responsable de l’Asie du Sud.
D’après les estimations du cabinet de consultants Mercer portant sur un échantillon qui correspond à 54 % du secteur, les fonds de pension espagnols ont affiché pour août une performance de 0,1 %, enregistrant ainsi leur second résultat positif mensuel consécutif grâce au bon comportement des marchés obligataires, rapporte Cinco Días. Depuis le début de l’année, la performance cumulée se situe à 0,5 % ; pour les douze mois à fin août, elle ressort à 3,4 %.
D’après les statistiques de l’association Inverco des sociétés de gestion, les fonds de valeurs mobilières espagnols ont accusé pour août des sorties nettes de 522 millions d’euros, les plus faibles depuis le début de l’année (les plus fortes ont été observées pour juin avec plus de 3,78 milliards), contre des souscriptions nettes de 282,3 millions pour le mois correspondant de 2009.Depuis le début de l’année, l’encours total a baissé de 9,6 % pour revenir à 147,45 milliards d’euros, la plus forte contraction (29,3 %) étant accusée par les fonds obligataires de court terme avec une chute de l’encours de 15,6 milliards d’euros, ce qui représente 90 % de la baisse constatée pour l’ensemble des fonds. En relatif, la baisse est encore plus forte pour les fonds monétaires avec 33,9 %, mais en absolu la contraction se limite à 4,7 milliards d’euros.Au total, cependant, 27 des 109 sociétés de gestion qui communiquent leurs chiffres à Inverco ont enregistré des souscriptions nettes pour août. La Caixa et Santander Asset Management sont les deux seules des dix plus grandes maisons à être dans ce cas, avec des rentrées nettes respectives de 204,5 millions et 41 millions d’euros.
Après quelque dix-mois difficiles, l’entité de gestion alternative de Deutsche Bank Asset Management, RREEF, repart à l’offensive en Asie selon de nouvelles modalités.Selon Asian Investor, les investissements seront désormais concentrés dans la sphère immobilière et seulement sur quatre grands marchés : l’Australie, la Chine, le Japon et la Corée du Sud.Dans cette perspective, la société a nommé deux responsables pays supplémentaires par le biais de promotions internes. Mark Cho prend la responsabilité des activités en Chine, une fonction nouvelle auparavant distribuée entre plusieurs senior managers. Mark Cho était précédemment chief operating officer (COO) pour la zone Asie-Pacifique. De son côté, Terry Hwang, précédemment responsable des acquisitions en Corée, devient responsable pays pour la Corée du Sud.
Le patron de la gestion de fortune de Merrill Lynch pour la zone Asie-Pacifique, Antony Hung, a présenté sa démission, selon Wealthbriefing. Après dix-huit ans au sein de Merrill, Antony Hung souhaite poursuivre d’autres intérêts professionnels.Wilson Ho, responsable de la gestion de Bank of America pour l’Asie du nord, devrait assurer l’intérim en attendant la nomination d’un successeur officiel.
Selon Asian Investor, le spécialiste des fonds de fonds FRM a transféré Marc Fisher du siège londonien au bureau de Hong Kong où il remplacera Au King Lun qui a rejoint au printemps dernier Bank of China Hong Kong en qualité de general manager et responsable de l’asset management.Marc Fisher, également responsable de produits FRM comme Sigma (fonds de CTA/managed futures fund), veut poursuivre le développement du bureau de Hong Kong au travers notamment de fonds de fonds dédiés.
Le spécialiste suisse des petites valeurs européennes, Argos Managers, envisage d'étoffer son offre. Dans cette perspective, la société qui affiche à peine 200 millions de francs suisses d’actifs, vient de recruter Jean Keller, depuis six ans à la tête de 3A, l’entité de gestion alternative de Syz & Co. Jean Keller devrait rejoindre Argos Managers en février prochain en qualité d’associé. Dans l’intervalle, il continuera à siéger au sein des différents comités de 3A. Mais dès le mois de février, il sera aux côtés de l'équipe d’Argos Managers pour enrichir la gamme de la boutique genevoise, notamment connue pour son fonds Argonaut. «Je crois que le temps est propice pour les petites structures spécialisées, au moment où les investisseurs sont à recherche de la valeur», souligne Jean Keller qui a dirigé l’asset management de Lombard Odier avant de rejoindre 3A en 2005.
Frédéric Rochat rejoint Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch & Cie à Londres où il prendra la responsabilité des activités de Lombard Odier à partir du 1er octobre prochain, avec comme objectif de développer sa présence dans les domaines de la gestion privée et institutionnelle. Il deviendra par ailleurs associé-gérant au 1er janvier 2012, indique Lombard Odier dans un communiqué publié le 3 septembre. Agé de 34 ans, diplômé de l’Université de Saint-Gall, Frédéric Rochat a effectué la majeure partie de sa carrière au sein du groupe Goldman Sachs, à Londres et à New York, dans la division de banque d’affaires, d’abord dans le conseil aux entreprises financières puis industrielles. Depuis 2006, Frédéric Rochat couvrait plus particulièrement le marché suisse depuis Londres, avec la responsabilité des secteurs bancaire et financier. A ce titre, il a participé à un grand nombre de transactions dans les domaines de l’asset management et de la banque privée, développant ainsi une solide connaissance des enjeux auxquels ces métiers sont aujourd’hui confrontés.
The scientific index council at the Paris stock exchange has decided to remove Dexia and Lagardère from the CAC 40, and to replace them with Natixis and Publicis, Nyse Euronext announced on 3 September. The changes will take effect on the trading day of 20 September.
The Swiss specialist in European small caps, Argos Managers, is planning to add to its product range. With this in view, the firm, which has barely CHF200m in assets under management, has recruited Jean Keller, who spent six years as head of 3A, the alternative management firm from Syz & Co. Keller will join Argos Managers in February, as a partner. In the meanwhile, he will continue to act as chair of several committees at 3A. But from the month of February, he will move to Argos Managers, and will work to build the product range at the Geneva-based management firm, which is largely known for its Argonaut fund. “I think it is a propitious time for small specialised structures, when investors are looking for value,” says Keller, who was head of asset management at Lombard Odier before joining 3A in 2005.
Frédéric Rochat has been appointed Managing Partner of Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch & Cie with effect from January 1, 2012. From October 1, 2010, he will assume responsibility for Lombard Odier’s activities in London with the objective to develop its presence in the fields of private and institutional management. The appointment of Frédéric Rochat will help strengthen the next generation of Partners within Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch & Cie, says a press release. Frédéric Rochat, 34, holds a degree in economics and business administration from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. He has spent most of his career working for the investment banking arm of Goldman Sachs Group in London and New York, first as an adviser to financial institutions, then industrial companies. In 2006, he started to cover Swiss corporates from London, with a particular focus on the private banking and financial sectors. In this role, he was involved in a large number of asset management and private banking transactions, allowing him to gain a solid understanding of the challenges these markets are currently exposed to.
Assets under management at the US firm Och-Ziff as of 1 September totalled about USD26.1bn, an increase of about USD200m compared with the previous month, according to a document submitted to the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC). The document states that this total amount of assets under management takes into account performance in the month ending on 31 August, as well as capital movements on 1 September.
Richard Pechter, a shareholder in Value Line, has announced that he has made an offer to acquire the mutual fund activities of the investment research group, which is required by an out-of-court agreement with the SEC to sell off its fund and broker-dealer divisions, the Wall Street Journal reports. Pechter is director of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and the regulatory division of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
Scout Investment Advisors is to acquire the US management firm Reams Asset Management, a specialist in fixed income for institutional clients. The sale will be completed in November, and will double assets under management at Scout, to USD18bn, Mutual Fund Wire reports.
On Thursday, the Compagnie Financière Edmond de Rothschild (LCF Rothschild) announced that it has recruited Axel Weytens, who most recently served as deputy CEO in charge of multi-management at Louvre Gestion (HSBC Private Wealth Management), for its central risk management office. Weytens will report to Jacques Boucquet, and will be in charge of risk management for asset management activities.
According to the most recent statistics from the CNMV, Sicav funds, vehicles used by Spanish high net worth individuals, had assets invested in Spain as of the end of March of EUR12.86bn, compared with EUR17.07bn as of the end of 2007, Expansión reports. As total assets in these Sicav funds totalled EUR31.48bn as of the end of 2007, and EUR26.42bn as of the end of March 2010, this means that the proportion of assets in Spain has fallen from 54% to 41%. Miguel Ángel García, chief investment officer at Banca Patrimonial Banca March, says that high net worth investors have been moving away from Spanish small and midcaps, and subsequently bonos, in favour of bunds. The weakness of the Euro against the US dollar has also driven high net worth clients to North America. Investments in US equities have risen by 11% expressed as a percentage of total investments since the beginning of the year, merely due to currency effects.
The asset management firm Claymore (an affiliate of Guggenheim Partners) is planning to launch a series of ETFs on 15 November, which will replicate corporate high-yield bond indices from Accretive Asset Management. It also notified the SEC on 1 September in a N1-A form that it plans to release the Claymore BulletShares High Yield Corporate Bond ETF on the market, with annual maturity dates ranging from 2012 to 2020, within the Claymore Exchange-Traded Fund Trust. The funds, for which the amount of the management commission has not yet been specified, will be managed by Chuck Craig and Saroj Kanuri.
iShares (BlackRock) on 1 September notified the SEC in a form N1-A that it plans to launch an ETF, the iShares International Inflation-Linked Bond Fund, which will invest in inflation-linked bonds. The objective will be to generate performance equivalent to that of the BofA Merrill Lynch International Diversified Inflation-Linked Index before fees. The amount of the management commission has not yet been announced.
The fund of hedge fund consulting and management firm Signet is launching its first UCITS III-compliant fund of funds, Citywire reports. The Signet Multi-Strategy fund offers weekly liquidity as well as a means to allocate to about 15 hedge funds worldwide which comply with the requirements of the directive. The fund is domiciled in Dublin and is aimed at investors in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, and Asia.
Regulators in Dublin have relaxed financial market rules in an effort to position Ireland as the leading European centre for a new wave of onshore hedge funds, says the Financial Times. The change took effect on September 1.
James Dimech DeBono, managing director for the past four and a half years in charge of the international financial engineering practice at Duff & Phelps, has joined KPMG as associate partner. He will be head of financial risk management activities. KPMG states that DeBono will aim to create a team in charge of assisting asset managers, funds and other financial institutions to prepare and evaluate their portfolios. The new team will be composed of quantitative finance and evaluation professionals with much experience in the valuation of “difficult to evaluate” portfolios and securities with limited liquidity.
Charles Kirwan-Taylor, CIO of RAB Capital since late 2008, is replacing Stephen Couttie, who resigned on Thursday from his position as CEO, effective immediately, the firm has announced in a statement published by the London Stock Exchange. No motive for the departure of Couttie has been given, but Rabcap saw its second consecutive half-yearly loss in the half to 30 June (GBP3.3m), while assets fell by another USD90m to USD1.26bn as of 30 June, after a contraction of USD550m in 2009. Before the financial crisis in 2007, Rabcap managed assets of over USD7bn.
fundstrategy reports that Frontier Capital Management has appointed Alex Gaitan as lead portfolio manager for its Frontier Global Hedge Fund. Gaitan, previously a senior fund of fund analyst at Redi & Partners, succeeds Richard Brazenor, who left the firm in June of this year. Frontier Capital Management has also appointed Andrew Cracknell as head of intermediated activities. Cracknell, who joined Frontier Capital Management in early 2008, became a partner later the same year. He was previously at Close Brothers. The group has also recruited Nahed Ennasr as a senior analyst in the investment team.
The head of multi-management at Henderson, Craig Heron, has told Investment Week that the team dedicated to funds of funds is planning to increase its exposure to US equities toward the end of the year. “Very high-quality shares underperformed last year during the speculative rally everywhere in the world, and these shares are continuing to underperform this year, particularly in the United States,” says Heron, adding that many of these businesses have healthy balance sheets and pay good dividends, meaning that the shares seem to be good value.
The Fondsbörse Hamburg on Monday, 6 September admits shares in the new BE Dynamic Fund (LI0113711308), an exchange traded investment (ETI) from the Liechtenstein management firm Minerva Investments, to trading. The product, which is licensed for sale in Germany and Austria, will primarily concentrate (at least 70%) on the 5 to 8 most promising shares listed on the Vienna stock exchange, of which at least 75% will follow the Styria Börse Express model portfolio, says Andreas Wölfl CEO of Minerva and the initial manager of the fund. The new ETI is a sub-fund of the “Minerva Structured Investments” vehicle. During its first week of trading (6-10 September), shares will be traded in Hamburg with a maximal «hot spread» of 50 basis points, which will allow investors to save on the front-end fee. Wölfl has also announced in a market statement that each investment will be accompanied by comments from the manager soon after it is made on the Austrian website Börse Express, and a weekly newsletter will be made available at http://www.be24.at. ETIs are funds whose shares are listed on a stock exchange, but which are not UCITS-compliant, which allows them to invest in hedge funds without needing to comply with risk diversification requirements; ETIs may also use leverage. The prospectus, however, meets the requirements of the European directive.
Dan Draper, global head of ETFs at Credit Suisse, has announced the forthcoming release in Germany of third-generation ETFs, which combine the advantages of synthetic replication with the transparency of physical replication, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung reports. The bank cannot eliminate the counterparty default risks associated with swaps, but will make the assembly more comprehensible to retail investors. The composition of a basket of underlying equities will be published on a weekly basis on the management firm’s website. Risk levels will not be affected, but at least subscribers will know what is in the portfolio.
According to statistics from the Inverco association of asset management firms, Spanish securities funds in August saw net outflows of EUR522m, the lowest since the beginning of the year (the highest came in June, totalling over EUR3.78bn), compared with net subscriptions of EUR282.3m in the corresponding month of 2009. Since the beginning of the year, total assets have fallen 9.6%, to a total of EUR147.45bn, with the largest contraction (29.3%) in short-term bond funds, with a decline of EUR15.6bn in assets, which represents 90% of the total decline for funds overall. In relative terms, the decline is even more pronounced for money market funds, at 33.9%, but in absolute terms, the contraction is limited to EUR4.7bn. In total, however, 27 of the 109 asset management firms which submit information to Inverco posted net subscriptions in August. La Caixa and Santander Asset Management are the only two of the top 10 firms to fall into this category, with net inflows of EUR204.5m and EUR41m, respectively.