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07/04/2010

Profits at fund management firms down by more than half in 2009

According to the quarterly report from the CNMV, Spanish fund management firms last year posted net profits of EUR243m, compared with EUR503m in 2008, and revenues from commissiosn fell 26% to EUR1.7bn, even though assets remained virtually unchanged, compared with a decline of 27% in 2008. Management commissions fell to an average of 0.82%, compared with 1.1%. Meanwhile, the report states that 31 management firms (compared with 34 in 2008), out of a total of 108, lost money last year.
07/04/2010

HSBC to launch an emerging markets absolute return fund

HSBC Global Asset Management is planning to launch an emerging markets absolute return fund toward the end of the month, Investment Week reports. The Luxembourg-domiciled fund, HSBC GIF GEM Equity Alpha Fund, will offer daily liquidity, and will have an annual performance objective of 10-15%, with volatility of 10% and limited market correlation. The new vehicle, which will comply with the UCITS III directive, joins the range of international investment funds from HSBC, which last month announced the launch of a European absolute return fund (see Newsmanagers of 19 March 2010).
07/04/2010

Promotion at HSBC Global AM

HSBC Global Asset Management has appointed Alex Letchfield as chief investment officer for UK private clients, Fund Strategy reports. Lethfield will succeed Jim Dunsford, who will concentrate on the management of the HSBC GIF Global Macro fund. Letchfield joined the group in 1993, and since late 2000 has been head of UK equities for British private clients.
07/04/2010

Schroders looks to organic growth

Plans for Schroders’ development still revolve around organic growth, says the Financial Times Fund Management. The asset manager has more than GBP1bn of surplus capital in its war chest, triggering speculation that it would buy other fund management businesses. But so far the group has stayed away from acquisition. Separately, about 12 per cent of Schroders’ total assets under management are generated by the Americas, a figure Alan Brown, CIO, is keen to boost.
07/04/2010

Rothschild & Cie creates new vehicle for direct investments

Rothschild & Cie is creating a new vehicle, Five Arrows Principal Investment, with EUR584m in assets, for direct investment of owners’ equity (EUR20m to EUR60m) in mid-sized companies in Western Europe, Agefi reports. In sectoral terms, the firm claims to be generalist, although real estate and highly specialised sectors are excluded. The team, which will include 11 people, and which will eventually also feature a 12th, will be based half in Paris and half in London, the newspaper adds.
07/04/2010

Investors expect 20% increase in hedge fund assets this year

According to the annual survey by Credit Suisse of institutional investors with about USD1trn invested in hedge funds (Hedge Fund Investor Survey), assets in hedge funds may total USD1.97trn by the end of the year, up from USD1.64trn at the end of 2009. About 9 percentage points, or EUR148bn, of this 20% increase would come from new subscriptions, while the remaining 11% would result from positive market effects. These estimates are in line with those of hedge fund managers, whose estimates were surveyed last month in the Global Hedge Fund Manager Survey from Credit Suisse. In both surveys, two thirds of respondents predict that investors who agree to longer lock-ups of their investments would benefit from reduced commissions. The two favourite strategies of these investors are global macro (67% of respondents are planning to increase their allocation to these funds), and event-driven, with 62% of respondents planning to increase their exposure. Geographically, 61% of investors are planning to increase their allocations to Asia-Pacific funds. The two favourite formats of subscribers are managed accounts and UCITS III hedge funds, with 39% and 38% of respondents, respectively, planning to increase their allocations to these products. Lastly, Credit Suisse states that 94% of investors say they have benefited from a higher level of transparency in the past 18 months than in the past about positions in portfolios.
07/04/2010

HSBC moves Geneva back office into single location

Agefi Switzerland reports that nearly 1,000 employees of HSBC Private Bank will be moving in mid-June from the several various buildings that the bank occupied in Geneva into a single international business centre in Blandonnet, located immediately next to Cointrin airport. The front office will continue to be based on the banks of Lake Leman. Following the integration of HSBC Guyerzeller Bank AG and Guyerzeller Trust Company AG, the bank has 1,375 employees in Geneva, and a total of 1,774 in Switzerland (including 358 in Zurich and 41 in Lugano).
07/04/2010

Deutsche Bank merges part of its private equity activities

On Tuesday, Deutsche Bank announced that, following the completion of its acquisition of Sal. Oppenheim, it will be centralizing its private equity fund of fund activities within its asset management division. The new entity, DB Private Equity, will include the private equity group of the private wealth management (PWM) division, the secondary private equity team from the affiliate RREEF, and lastly, Sal. Oppenheim Private Equity Partners (SOPEP). Assets in the new entity will total about EUR6bn. The global head of DB Private Equity will be Chris Minter, managing director of Deutsche Bank, who will report to Kevin Parker, global head of Deutsche Asset Management and a member of the executive committee group at Deutsche Bank. Rolf Wickenkamp, who was until recently a partner at SOPEP, has been appointed vice chairman of DB Private Equity.
07/04/2010

Credit Suisse hires four specialists from Sal. Oppenheim

Four client advisors from Sal. Oppenheim, specialised in wealth management, will be joining Credit Suisse in Berlin, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. Three of them joined the Swiss firm on 1 April, while the fourth will follow on 1 July. The Berlin office will then include 17 people, to serve as many as possible of the approximately 7,500 high net worth and ultra-high net worth private clients in the German capital. In total, Credit Suisse has about 500 people in 13 locations in Germany, including 150 client advisors.
07/04/2010

Maintrust adopts Nomura Asset Management Deutschland brand name

The German-registered asset management firm Maintrust KAG mbH (EUR1.8bn in assets as of the end of March), an affiliate of Nomura since 1991, has adopted the name Nomura Asset Management Deutschland KAG, or NAM Deutschland. The change will favour cross-selling and the opening of new distribution channels. Open-ended funds from the firm which use the prefix “MAT” will soon be changing names. Nomura (EUR173bn in assets as of the end of December), which relies on Maintrust’s expertise in the specialist bond fund segment and for custom solutions in Germany, is planning to extend the range of products available from its German affiliate into Asian products and other international funds.
07/04/2010

Tim Geithner calls for revision of AIFM directive

Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, this week made a fresh plea to European governments not to “discriminate” against US fund managers as they negotiate new rules for the hedge fund and private equity industries in an April 5 letter to Alistair Darling, Chancellor, that was obtained by the Financial Times. The letter was also sent to the finance ministers of Germany, France and Spain.
07/04/2010

SEB ImmoInvest resells a building in Shanghai

SEB Asset Management has announced that it has resold the Platinum office building (34,000 square metres) in Shanghai for about EUR200m to a realty firm listed in Hong Kong. The property belonged to the portfolio of the open-ended real estate fund SEB ImmoInvest (EUR6.3bn in assets). The sale was made at a price 30% higher than the price paid to buy the property in November 2007, and 7% above its market value. Recently, SEB AM announced that SEB ImmoInvest has acquired the Claude Bernard A2 office property under construction (11,200 square metres), which will be completed in May 2012, in the 19th district of Paris. The vendor is BNP Paribas Real Estate Property Development.
07/04/2010

Critical reaction to planned sale of Lehman asset management unit

Some of the world’s biggest banks, including Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, are fighting Lehman Brothers’ plan to spin off an asset management unit known as Legacy Asset Management, says Financial News Online.The banks say the proposal, which Lehman will use to repay creditors, is being rushed and appears to be unfair to certain Lehman creditors.
07/04/2010

BNP Paribas IP and Fortis IM become one

In a statement, BNP Paribas Investment Partners (BNP Paribas IP) and Fortis Investment Management (Fortis IM) on Tuesday announced that they have finalised the merger of their respective holding companies as of 1 April 2010. The combined entity will now operate under a single brand name: BNP Paribas Investment Partners. On paper, the integration of Fortis Investments makes BNP Paribas IP the fifth-largest asset management firm in Europe, and 11th worldwide, with EUR530bn in assets under management and advised as of the end of 2009. In detail, BNP Paribas IP now has 60 investment centres, each of which is responsible for managing an asset class or a specific type of product, and about 1,200 investment professionals, a statement says. With this multi-boutique model, which allies a large-scale asset management provider with specialist partners, BNPP IP extending its geographical coverage into other markets, such as Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. Meanwhile, BNPP IP is strengthening its presence on emerging markets, particularly in Asia, which the firm places at the core of its growth strategy, through a strong local presence and a range of investment solutions.
07/04/2010

BNP Paribas appoints an SRI strategy chief

BNP Paribas on 6 April announced the appointment of Laurence Pessez as deputy head for social and environmental responsibility (RSE). She will be largely responsible for overseeing deployment of a global RSE strategy and for elaborating an environmental policy for the group. Pessez, who joined the BNP Paribas group in 2002 as director of communications for BNP Paribas Assurance, has since 2006 served as director of communication and social and environmental responsibility at BNP Paribas Assurance. She will report directly to Jean Clamon, deputy CEO and member of the executive board at BNP Paribas, a statement says.
07/04/2010

Coverage levels improve for US pension funds

The coverage ratio for US pension funds improved further in March, to 88.1%, a gain of 2.8 percentage points, according to monthly statistics from BNY Mellon Asset Management.
07/04/2010

CBRE launches PAIF real estate fund

CB Richard Ellis Investors (CBRE) has announced the launch of the second Property Authorised Investment Fund (PAIF) on the British market, Fund Strategy reports. The first fund of this type was offered a few weeks ago by Clavis Walden (Piccadilly UK Commercial Property Income Fund) PAIF funds are the open-ended equivalent of REITs. The target investors for the vehicle are pension funds, but retail investors will also have access, via a feeder fund of the same name, available on the major platforms.
07/04/2010

CNMV not optimistic about real estate funds

In its report on the situation of the market, the CNMV estimates that real estate funds have the most unfavourable outlooks of all categories of investment funds, and that “it is unlikely” that their situation will improve substantially until the Spanish real estate sector begins to recover, Expansión reports. In 2009, assets in real estate funds fell 12.7%, while the number of subscribers contracted by 14.2%, to 83,583. The number of funds decreased by one, to eight. Assets under management as of the end of December totalled EUR6.46bn, of which 72.6% was in funds which were undergoing liquidation or which had frozen or delayed redemptions. Real estate funds lost an average of 9.3% last year.
07/04/2010

26 funds launched in first quarter

Funds People reports that between 15 January and 26 March, the CNMV registered 26 new funds, compared with 23 in first quarter 2009, and 44 in the first three months of 2008. More than half of these new products (14) are guaranteed funds. The most active management firm was BBVA Asset Management, which launched five guaranteed funds, one bond fund, and one diversified fund. The CNMV says that it has registered three new Spanish-registered hedge funds: Altex Activist, Capitrade Systematic Global Futures, and Arcano Credit Fund.
06/04/2010
Fonds

software-systems lance une notation de fonds "3D"

L’autrichien software-systems lancera le 5 mai lors du congrès Finance & Ethics (FER) son nouveau concept de notation de fonds tridimentionnelle, le FER3D. Les composantes en seront une notation de risque du fonds selon les normes réglementaires européennes, la performance par rapport aux autres fonds de la même catégorie (peer group) et enfin la notation éthique/dynamique EDA (lire notre article du 13 juillet 2009).
Fonds
06/04/2010

Aviva Investors restructure son business development

Après les départs fin décembre d’Adam Lessing, head of business development Europe, et de Dirk Skarba, head of business development Central Europe, il semble qu’Aviva Investors soit en train de restructurer son activité de business development mondial, rapporte Fondsprofessionell. La nouvelle organisation ne s’appuierait plus sur les différents pays mais sur les trois typologies de clientèle : établissements financiers, institutions et Aviva. D’après Fondsprofessionell, cette réorganisation fait peut-être partie d’une réduction des coûts parce que les rentrées n'évoluent pas aussi positivement que prévu.
06/04/2010
Fonds

Bankinter lance un fonds garanti axé sur la reprise américaine

Bankinter commercialise jusqu’au 13 avril le fonds Bankinter Consolidación América Garantizado qui garantit le capital jusqu’au 14 avril 2015 augmenté d’une participation (plafonnée à 2 % par mois) à la hausse de l’indice américain S&P 500, rapporte Cinco Días. La souscription minimale est fixée à 600 euros et la commission de gestion s'élève à 1,90 % tandis que celle de banque dépositaire ressort à 0,10 %.
Fonds
06/04/2010
Fonds

Les fonds de pension perdent progressivement de leur attrait

Selon un rapport de la Banque d’Espagne publié la semaine dernière, les rentrées nettes des fonds de pension individuels ont porté en 2009 sur 5,6 milliards d’euros, soit le niveau le plus bas de ces dix dernières années. La situation est même plus sombre qu’il n’y paraît, puisqu’en 1999 on ne comptait que 3,6 millions d’adhérents et que l’on est actuellement à 11 millions, souligne El País.Cette désaffection tient à la suppression des avantages fiscaux, aux mauvaises performances (en moyenne sensiblement inférieures sur 3, 5 et 10 ans tant à l’inflation qu’au rendement des Bonos) et à la cherté des commissions de gestion, les plus élevées d’Europe, qui ont représenté plus d’un milliard d’euros en 2009.
Fonds
06/04/2010

BNP Paribas cède sa gestion privée dans trois juridictions "exotiques"

BNP Paribas et la Banque Scotia ont annoncé vendredi 2 avril avoir signé un accord prévoyant le transfert des activités de gestion privée de BNP Paribas à Panama, Grand Cayman et aux Bahamas à la Banque Scotia. De fait, l'établissement français respecte l’engagement qu’il avait pris en septembre 2009.Sous réserve de l’approbation des différentes autorités compétentes, la transaction doit préserver «dans des conditions optimales», précise le communiqué de BNP Paribas, les emplois localement et garantir aux clients le maintien d’un service de qualité avec la Banque Scotia, banque canadienne internationale qui offre des services financiers aux particuliers et aux entreprises au Panama depuis 1974, aux Îles Caïmans depuis 1968 et aux Bahamas depuis 1956.La réalisation de l’opération est prévue pour le troisième trimestre 2010. Les termes de l’accord ne sont pas publics mais BNP Paribas note que ce dernier n’a pas d’impact financier significatif pour le groupe.
06/04/2010
Fonds

Le groupe UFG-LFP lance un fonds de dette décotée

L’Agefi rapporte que Delff Management, filiale londonienne du groupe UFG-LFP, lance Delff Senior Corporate Loans Fund 2016, son premier fonds commun de titrisation (FCT) ayant pour objet le rachat de dettes décotées en euros sur le marché secondaire des prêts syndiqués (LBO ou corporate). Racheter à moins de 80% les tranches seniors sécurisées d’entreprises comme Vivarte, Frans Bonhomme, TDF ou Materis laisse entrevoir un rendement intéressant, composé d’un spread de 250 à 450 points de base au-dessus de l’Euribor et de la plus-value sur le remboursement final, détaille le quotidien.
Fonds
06/04/2010
Fonds

Dépréciation de deux actifs du Weltfonds de TMW Pramerica

TMW Pramerica Property Investment GmbH a annoncé jeudi après-midi que la valeur liquidative de son fonds immobilier offert au public TMW Immobilien Weltfonds a été abaissé de 67 cents à 51,81 euros du fait que que l’estimation de deux actifs, l’un à Londres et l’autre en Floride, a été revue à la baisse lors de l’audit de routine.Les remboursements du Weltfonds sont de toutes façons suspendus à nouveau depuis le 8 février (lire notre article du 10 février). Ce fonds affichait fin février un encours de 791,67 millions d’euros.
Fonds
06/04/2010

Les gérants-vedette tendent à se mettre à leur compte

D’après une étude de Prince Associates, 48 % des clients de banque privée aux Etats-Unis ont retiré leurs avoirs de leur banque entre septembre 2008 et janvier 2010. 40 % d’entre eux se sont tournés vers un multi-family office et 26,4 % ont opté pour un gestionnaire indépendant, rapporte Expansión. Cette évolution coïncide avec la multiplication de départs de gérants-star qui montent leur propre entreprise.Par exemple, Joan David Grimá a quitté le Santander pour créer Tegri Asesoramiento, tandis que Zoe Cruz, ex co-présidente de Morgan Stanley, lançait le gestionnaire alternatif Voras Capital Management. Eric Brugel et Jeff Erber (ex Merrill Lynch) se sont lancés dans la gestion patrimoniale avec Grey Owl Capital Management, imités par Erich Thurber, Fred Molfino et Brett Sharkey (ex Morgan Stanley Smith Barney), qui ont monté Three Bridge Wealth Advisors. Par ailleurs quatre des fondateurs de Old Lane (citigroup) et leur directeur exécutif Guru Ramakrishnan ont lancé fin 2009 le gestionnaire alternatif Meru Capital Group (200 millions d’euros d’encours) tandis que Justin Kennedy (ex Deutsche Bank) prépare le lancement d’un fonds immobilier.Florián de Sigy, directeur Europe des produits structurés chez Deutsche Bank, vient de lancer un gestionnaire de hedge funds, Gamma Finance, avec Javier Rodríguez, un ancien dirigeant de Barclays Global Investors.Enfin, Andrew Bodner a rejoint son père Martin, lui aussi ancien d’UBS, pour fonder une société dans le new Jersey, tandis qu’Arié Assayag (ex Soc Gen) a rejoint une trentaine de gérants senior pour lancer un hedge fund.
06/04/2010
Fonds

Période de vaches maigres pour le private equity

Selon Preqin, les capital-investisseurs n’ont collecté qu’environ 50 milliards de dollars dans le monde entier au premier trimestre, soit à peine plus qu’en octobre-décembre 2009, alors que, durant la période faste de 2007-2008, les rentées avaient atteint jusqu'à 200 milliards de dollars par trimestre, rapporte la Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. La difficulté de lever de nouveaux fonds tient notamment au fait que les ventes d’entreprises du portefeuille se sont raréfiées, si bien que les souscripteurs potentiels, assureurs, fonds de pension ou fondations, disposent de moins de liquidités.
Fonds

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