Mercredi, Liontrust Asset Management a annoncé le recrutement d’Ian Lewis, qui était head of UK institutional clients chez New Star Asset Management, comme head of institutional clients. Il doit rejoindre le 1er septembre tandis que Stephen Watson, institutional marketing director, prendra un poste à temps partiel. Stephen Weston aura plus particulièrement la responsabilité commerciale du marché nord-américain.D’autre part, Adrian Collins, managing director chez Gartmore Investment Management, Liontrust a été retenu comme administrateur non exécutif et deputy chairman de Liontrust Asset Management en remplacement de Bernard Asher, qui doit prendre sa retraite à une date qui n’a pas encore été fixée.

Le premier conseil de surveillance d’Accès Pierre, issu de la fusion des SCPI Cortal Pierre 1 et Cortal Pierre 2, a nommé président, Paul Louradour, et vice-président, Paul Chenel, BNP Paribas REIM demeurant société de gestion de cette SCPI. Accès Pierre représente une soixantaine d’actifs immobiliers, essentiellement des bureaux franciliens pour une valeur de l’ordre de 300 millions d’euros.

La société Mandarine Gestion lance Mandarine Reflex, un fonds de gestion flexible dont l’objectif est de valoriser le capital, quelles que soient les conditions de marché, sur une durée de placement recommandée de cinq ans. L’équipe de gestion s’appuie sur deux moteurs de performances. Le premier concerne la gestion de l’exposition aux marchés d’actions européens qui peut varier de 0 % à 60 % via la mise en place de stratégies de couvertures et l’utilisation de produits dérivés. Cette activité est mise en œuvre par la société de gestion Edmond de Rothschild AM et se combine à un deuxième moteur de performance: le «stock picking» issu de la gestion «value» réalisée par Marc Renaud et celui résultant de la gestion du momentum affichant un biais «croissance» sous la responsabilité de Joëlle Morlet-Selmer. Le fonds Mandarine Reflex est en effet investi au minimum à 90% en actions, principalement via les fonds Mandarine Valeur et Mandarine Opportunités. En outre, des moteurs de performance supplémentaires sont mis en oeuvre par l’équipe « Recherche & Allocation globale » d’Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management. Via l’allocation entre les différents styles de gestion des fonds sous-jacents (value, croissance) et par l’intermédiaire d’une gestion de l’exposition aux devises européennes existantes dans l’indice Dow Jones Stoxx 600. A cela s’ajoute une gestion opportuniste de l’exposition aux taux européens (gestion sur la courbe des taux, gestion de la duration…).Caractéristiques du fonds Nom du fonds: Mandarine Reflex Code ISIN: FR0010756544 (Parts R) / FR0010753608 (Parts I) Commission de souscription: 2 % max. Frais de gestion: Fixe: 2 % Variables: 20 % au-delà de 5 % Souscription initiale minimale : 1 part (Parts R) / 500000 euros (Parts I) Montant de la part : 500 EUR (Parts R) / 5000 euros (Parts I)

Selon les données d’Europerformance arrétées au 5 juin, les fonds composés de petites et moyennes capitalisations européennes affichent une progression moyenne de 18,08 % depuis le début de l’année. On notera, parmi les dix premiers de la catégorie, la présence de fonds gérés par de grands établissements comme SGAM Invest Europe Mid Cap BC de la Société Générale (20,29 %) ou CAAM Microcaps Europe du Crédit Agricole (18,38 %). De leur coté, les fonds investis en petites et moyennes capitalisations françaises sont moins performantes en moyenne avec un gain de 14,23 %. Ce qui n’empêche pas les meilleurs de la catégorie d’afficher des hausses supérieures à 30 %. Exemple CFD Mid Caps d’Amilton Asset Management et Pluvalca France Smalls Caps de la Financiere Arbevel affichent respectivement des gains de 34,94 % et 33,71 %.

Hammerson vient de nommer Christophe Clamageran pour siéger au conseil d’administration du Groupe en qualité d’executive director. Christophe Clamageran, qui est entré chez Hammerson en mars 2008 en qualité de directeur du développement, est actuellement directeur général pour la France. Il était auparavant directeur général adjoint de BNP Paribas Real Estate, en charge de l’immobilier résidentiel et de bureaux et responsable de la division Asset Management. Avant cette date, il était président de Meunier Immobilier d’Entreprise.

Aux Etats-Unis, les fonds à long terme ont enregistré des souscriptions pour la douzième semaine consécutive, selon les chiffres de l’Investment Company Institute cités par le Wall Street Journal. Sur la semaine au 3 juin, les souscriptions totales se sont élevées à 13,6 milliards de dollars.

The integration executive committee of Fortis Investments appointed by BNP Paribas Investment Management (see Newsmanagers of 10 June) will gain four members from Fortis Investment, including Keith Rake (COO, IT), Stewart Edgar for Asia, Will L. Braman for the United States, and Vincent Cambonie as CFO. They join Nicolas Faller, global head of distribution partners, and William De Vijlder, Global CIO.

SEI has partnered with F&C to launch a lobbying service in environmental, social and governance issues for all the funds the US asset manager sells to its UK and European clients.

On Wednesday, Liontrust Asset Management announced the recruitment of Ian Lewis, formerly head of UK institutional clients at New Star Asset Management, as head of institutional clients. He will join the firm on 1 September, while Stephen Watson, institutional marketing director, will take a part-time position. Stephen Weston will be in charge of sales in North America.Meanwhile, Adrian Collins, managing director at Gartmore Investment Management, Liontrust, has been retained as non-executive director and deputy chairman at Liontrust Asset Management, replacing Bernard Asher, who will retire at a date which has not yet been determined.

In the United States, long-term mutual funds have posted net subscriptions for the twelfth consecutive week, according to statistics from the Investment Company Institute, cited by the Wall Street Journal. In the week ending 3 June, total subscriptions came to USD13.6bn.

In April, a rebound on the equities markets encouraged European investors to move away from money market funds to return to slightly higher-risk investments such as equities and bond funds, according to the latest Lipper FMI Fund Flash. In a month when net subscriptions totalled EUR3bn, equities funds saw inflows of only EUR4.4bn. Emerging markets funds in particular saw a good part of this tendency, Lipper observes. But the reversal of the previous trend of outflows was particularly marked for bond funds, which saw net subscriptions of EUR3.6bn, the highest level since January 2006. Convertible bond funds and options funds also had positive momentum in April, with EUR1.6bn each in inflows. Lipper also notes that the asset management firm with the strongest net subscriptions in April was Deutsche Bank/DWS, which also had the strongest inflows to equities funds. Since the beginning of the year, European funds have seen net inflows of EUR30bn.

The S&P X-Alpha Fund and the Zins Strategie Fund 2014 are the two newest product offerings from Deutsche Bank London.The first of these funds offers exposure to a strategy that aims to generate non-directional returns by exploiting the potential of the relative performance of growth and value indexes compared to their regional equities indexes (United States, Europe, Japan, and UK). The management team will aim to contain risk, and will target an annual volatility of 8%. The fund, which complies with the UCITS III directive, will be offered for sale in several countries, and will offer daily liquidity. Manfred Schraepler, head of funds group, says equities funds have seen net subscriptions of about EUR365m YTD.The second product, the Zins Strategie Fund 2014, provides investors with exposure to the evolution of the db Sharp Trend Euro, a trading strategy which allocates assets in an equally weighted manner to a portfolio of five momentum strategies based on fixed income, of which three focus on short-term interest rates in Euros, US dollars and pounds sterling, and two focus on dollar/pound and dollar/Euro exchange rates. This product also complies with the UCITS III directive, and has daily NAV. It offers retail investors access to a market neutral bond strategy likely to generate attractive performance in environments of either high or low rates.

Matt Pumo, senior relationship manager at Liontrust Asset Management, has been recruited by Gartmore Investments (GBP16.8bn in assets as of the end of March, Hellman & Friedman group), as business development director for UK institutional clients. He will report to Angus Woolhouse, head of global institutional, Professional Pensions reports.

In the fiscal year ending 31 March, assets under management at Liontrust Asset Management contracted by GBP2.8bn, to a total of GBP1.9bn, and they have since fallen to GBP1.2bn as of 9 June, MoneyMarketing reports. The fall is imputed by the asset management firm to the decline of the US equities market and to the departure of the star managers Jeremy Land and William Patisson in January. As of the end of December, assets still totalled GBP3.3bn.Profits for the fiscal year fell by one quarter to GBP12.4bn, from GBP16.5bn.

The private equity team at Aberdeen Asset Management has organised an MBO to create a new private equity firm entitled Maven Capital Partners, Citywire reports. The operation was spearheaded by the current CIO of Aberdeen Asset Management Private Equity, Bill Nixon. Five others will go with him to the new firm. Aberdeen will own a minority stake in the entity.

«There is a major risk that a bubble could develop if you consider that US institutional investors were seated on a record USD2,555bn in money market funds on May 4th, 2009", says Bernard Aybran, head of multimanagement at Invesco in Paris. This actually means that institutional investors, and not only in the US, have lots of cash which just doesn’t perform at all, that produces no yield. This huge amount of liquidity will have to be invested somewhere, just to pay for the pensions, for instance. Therefore, there is a risk that big amounts of cash could be invested at the same time in one asset class that would have become fashionable, which could end into a bubble.

The “secular forum” debate hosted by Pimco (Allianz Global Investors) this year revealed that specialists at the bond management firm are predicting that the bond markets will acclimate to a “new norm,” which will be characterized by lower growth, a small banking sector, and larger government influence, says Matthieu Louanges, head of business portfolio management at Pimco Germany and a member of the executive board at Allianz Global Investors KAG. Pimco experts are currently leaning in favour of high-quality bonds that generate consistent returns. Portfolios are fundamentally oriented to anticipate a trend in which short-term rates will fall faster than long-term ones. Louanges says central banks will be likely to keep their prime rates at a low level for a long time. In light of the stability policy pursued by the European central bank (ECB), Pimco currently predicts only limited inflationary tendencies, and therefore predicts low level of risks to Euro-denominated bond prices. Inflation-indexed bonds are currently among the most attractively-priced instruments to protect portfolios against the long-term consequences of expansionist monetary and budgetary policies in industrialized countries, says Pimco.

According to the Wall Street Journal, quoting people close to the matter, the acquisition of Barclays Global Investors by BlackRock for USD13bn will be announced this Thursday. BlackRock will manage USD2.8trn in assets, eight times the assets it had in 2004, before it embarked on a series of deals.

José Ramon Contreras who was previously an equities manager, has been appointed equity CIO for Spain at Santander Asset Management, replacing Gerardo Puerta, who was appointed head of asset allocation in mid-May, Funds People reports.Puerta himself replaces Jaime Martínez Gómez, who has been appointed CIO of Fonditel (the firm which manages the Telefónica pension fund), following the dismissal of Íñigo Colomo, who was deemed responsible for the poor performance of the Velociraptor and Albatross funds of hedge funds, which were compromised by the Madoff affair.

In May, equities funds on sale in Sweden attracted SEK14.7bn in net subscriptions, the highest level ever recorded in one month (excluding PPM), the Swedish investment fund association Fondbolagens Förening reports.Diversified funds and bond funds also show a positive balance of inflows, of SEK1.1bn and SEK0.8bn, respectively. However, money market funds have seen outflows of SEK8.6bn, while SEK0.3bn have flowed out of hedge funds.In all asset classes combined, Swedish funds have posted net subscriptions of SEK7.8bn, the sixth consecutive month of net inflows. Year to date, inflows have totalled SEK27.5bn, of which SEK36.7bn have gone into equities funds.

Reforms to European financial regulations will be mentioned in the final declaration at the end of the European summit to be held on 18 and 19 June, according to Reuters, which has seen the document, L’Agefi reports. “The European Commission calls for rapid progress in the area of regulation of financial markets, particularly regulation of hedge funds and increased tier one owners’ equity requirements for banks,” the draft statement to conclude the summit announces.

Simon Walker, head of the BCVA (British Venture Capital Association), is remaining steadfast in his opposition to a planned European directive on hedge funds, Les Echos reports. The legislation will “profoundly affect the ability of private equity to help Europe to recover,” Walker claims. The UK government will hear the grievances of City professionals this week. The UK is by far the largest market in Europe for private equity.

Simon Walker, head of the BCVA (British Venture Capital Association), is remaining steadfast in his opposition to a planned European directive on hedge funds, Les Echos reports. The legislation will “profoundly affect the ability of private equity to help Europe to recover,” Walker claims. The UK government will hear the grievances of City professionals this week. The UK is by far the largest market in Europe for private equity.

As usual in a recession, the recovery of the stock markets has been largely driven by the financial sectors. According to La Tribune, the fact that in Europe, banks’ share prices have risen 102% since their low point on 9 March does not necessarily mean that all the troubles are behind us. Between the peak in April 2007 and the lowest point on 9 March 2009, there was a fall of 83%. In Europe, the extent to which the share prices of European banks is depressed remains significant (-66% off their previous peak in 2007). Among the factors that favour the sector, the newspaper observes, US banks are benefiting from a recovering appetite for investment; these banks have raised nearly USD100bn to reimburse their emergency capital injections to the US Treasury. In addition to this, sales activity has been sustained thanks to record bond issues and numerous capital increases. The significantly stronger decline in short-term rates than long-term rates on both sides of the Atlantic has worked strongly in the favour of banks. Financial analysts still predict that there will be a strong rebound in bank profits in 2009 (+37.8%, after an all-time decline of 78.1% in 2008). But these good news seem to have already been taken into account by the market.

At the current rate of consumption, the planet now has enough oil left to last 42 years, La Tribune notes. According to statistics published by BP yesterday, the newspaper reports, proven worldwide oil reserves now remaining to be mined total 1.258 trillion barrels, down 0.2% from 2008. This is the first time in ten years that the amount of proven reserves has fallen.

Central banks face a real headache, as rising returns on government bonds on both sides of the Atlantic may undermine a potentially sustainable economic recovery, La Tribune reports. Despite strategies employed by the Fed and the Bank of England to attempt to confront this, tension is increasing, particularly in the past three months. The newspaper points out that returns on US ten-year government bonds has risen from 2.20% at the beginning of the year to 3.92% yesterday. German bunds with the same maturity have risen from 2.89% to 3.725. And now movements on the part of creditors are there to contend with. After China at the end of last week, Russia is now planning to reduce the presence of US government bonds in its currency reserves by Usd401bn, in favour of bonds issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). As the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) come close to caching up, La Tribune reports, the offensive against Uncle Sam is gaining momentum. The spectre of the inflationary monster, in the wake of massive recovery programs in Europe and the United States, and the borrowing needs of the public sector in the most economically powerful countries on the planet contribute to this problem. La Tribune estimates that Europe is better immunized against these threats than the United States, where returns on ten-year US Treasury bonds are still higher than those in Germany.

Credit Suisse, which already had a presence in Qatar in private banking, will now roll out investment banking and asset management services in the country. Aladdin Hangari becomes country head for Qatar.

Le prix du baril a dépassé hier à New York la barre des 71 dollars, bondissant au plus fort de la séance de 2,54 % à un record de 71,79 dollars

La flambée du prix du baril, qui a dépassé les 71 dollars, se fait au détriment des Treasuries

La Russie a ouvert la porte à une réduction, dans ses réserves de change, de la part des emprunts d'Etat américains au profit d'obligations émises par le FMI