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16/03/2009

United Kingdom - Paulson made more than USD300m money by shorting Lloyds and HBOS

Fondsprofessionell relays Bloomberg reports that the alternative management firm Paulson & Co has earned gains since September of GBP311m by short-selling shares in Lloyds Banking Group and HBOS. Paulson also declared a short position amounting to 1.17% of capital in Barclays, whose shares have since fallen by two thirds.
16/03/2009

United States - ING IM merges two closed-ended real estate funds

ING Investment Management has announced that the boards of trustees of the closed real estate funds ING Clarion Real Estate Income Fund and ING Clarion Global Real Estate Income Fund have approved the merger of the two funds. The funds are managed by ING Clarion Real Estate Securities (USD11bn in assets as of the end of 2008).
16/03/2009

Germany - Mirror, mirror, on the wall...

DWS (Deutsche Bank), Deka (savings banks) and Allianz Global Investors are all claiming to be the number one management firm in Germany. All three of them are right, in their way. In the case of DWS, it is true in terms of asset volumes in securities funds; for Deka, it is true if funds of funds and house funds in which they are invested are included in the count; and for AGI, it is true counting assets under management for the insurance group. Union Investment (co-operative banks), meanwhile, is number one for assets in Reister retirement savings accounts, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. But the question of which firm has the most assets under management doesn’t say anything about which one is the best.
16/03/2009

Germany - Talanx to buy stakes in Swiss Life and MLP

According to financial industry sources, Talanx is preparing to buy a 10% stake in Swiss Life, and to buy up 10% of the 24% stake in MLP held by the insurer, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. The Talanx group incudes Hannover Rück (Hanovre Ré), HDI-Gerling and Aspecta, the latter two of which already cooperate with AWD and MLP in life insurance distribution. Swiss Life owns 100% of AWD; its stake in MLP was diluted by a capital increase which Axa and Allianz subscribed to.
16/03/2009

Germany - Hedge funds may sue Porsche

The Financial Times reports that hedge funds belonging to the Alternative Investment Management Association are considering a lawsuit against Porsche over its involvement in the spectacular rise in the share price of Volkswagen last year which caused the funds billions of dollars in losses.
16/03/2009

United Kingdom - Centaurus launches a fund

The hedge fund Centaurus Capital, managed by former BNP Paribas traders Bernard Oppetit and Randy Freeman, will launch a new merger arbitrage fund, the Financial Times reports. The new product will charge 1.5% per year in fees and 15% of profits, which is less than the 2% and 20% usually charged in the sector. The fund will offer total transparency as to its positions and will allow monthly withdrawals with 30 days’ advance notice.
16/03/2009

Europe - Private equity in the red

The European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association will announce on Friday that the European venture capital sector lost 26.4% in 2008, the Financial Times reports.
16/03/2009

United Kingdom - RAB changes managers of UK fund

The hedge fund manager RAB Capital has replaced the managers of its British fund, Mark Darell Brown and Steve Thompson, as the fund’s assets have fallen from USD400m two years ago to less than USD5m currently, the Financial Times reports. Nearly all the fund’s clients left in the wake of 31% losses last year. The fund will now be managed by Simon Acton and Alex Codrington, the managers of the RAB European fund.
16/03/2009

United States - Madoff appeal to be heard on 19 March

Following the incarceration of Bernard Madoff, his lawyer Ira Lee Sorkin will appeal the decision before a New York federal court. The former broker’s appeal will be heard on Thursday, 19 March. Les Echos reports that the estimated size of the fraud has been revised upward from USD50bn to USD65bn.
16/03/2009

United States - JPMorgan leads US managers

JPMorgan posted the largest subscriptions of any US management firm last year, with USD140bn, the Financial Times reports, citing Morningstar. But excluding money market funds, the management firm posted net redemptions of USD1.3bn in the twelve months to the end of February.
16/03/2009

United States - Oppenheimer recruits former Stanford managers

Not all is lost for the 1,000 former employees of Stanford who lost their jobs last week, says the Financial Times. 100 of them have been offered jobs at the financial services group Oppenheimer Holdings, which is hoping to grow by opening new branches in the United States.
16/03/2009

United States - Stanford's labyrinth

Compared to Bernard Madoff, Sir Allen Stanford is small fry. But he stands out for the size and complexity of his USD8bn fraud, the Financial Times reports. The Stanford group controlled at least 175 entities, including banks and restaurants in more than 100 cities, such as Houston, Montreal, Caracas, Quito, and St. Croix.
16/03/2009

United States - Proportion of overseas investments decreases for Loomis Global Bond Fund

Although it is supposed to be a ?global? product, David Rolley, Kenneth Buntrock and Lynda Schweitzer, co-managers of the Global Bond Fund (USD1.5bn) from Loomis, Sayles & Co (USD106bn), now have a ?recovery exposure? to the private sector in the United States, which accounts for 47% of assets, the Wall Street Journal reports.Although the fund’s largest positions are still in European bonds, the Euro is underweighted. The fund is only 10% invested in junk bonds, but none of the 283 assets it holds in this category present serious default risks.
16/03/2009

United States - Departure of Legg Mason senior vice president

The executive vice-president of Legg Mason, Peter Bain, will be leaving the bank at the end of the month, eFinancialNews reports. Bain was head of the asset management division, but has chosen to ?pursue other opportunities.? His responsibilities will be redistributed to several other team members internally.
16/03/2009

Germany - Management firms call for transparent and liquid corporate bond market

Handelsblatt reports that Deka (savings banks) and Union Investment (co-operative banks) are willing to support an initiative led by DWS (Deutsche Bank), which is calling on Deutsche Börse to provide more transparent and liquid trading of corporate bonds, a market on which trading now takes place largely on an ad-hoc basis by telephone. DWS would like the stock market enterprise to appoint a market maker, who would be respnsible for setting firm prices and executing the corresponding orders at these prices. It would also be possible to separate price formation and execution. But banks see these plans as difficult to realise at a time when they are in the midst of efforts to reduce debt, a spokesman for the Sifma banking association says.
13/03/2009

United Kingdom - Redemptions suspended at Weavering

Weavering Macro Fixed Income, the flagship fund from Weavering Capital, a London-based hedge fund management firm, has frozen redemptions after an internal investigation found swaps for a significant sum with a firm related to the fund manager, the Financial Times reports.
13/03/2009

United States - Bill Gross (Pimco) returns to Treasuries

Bill Gross has announced that he has increased the allocation to Treasuries in the portfolio of the Total Return Fund from Pimco (Allianz group), putting it at its highest level since July 2007, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. Gross, who was also long on MBS, moved to a negative position on Treasuries in January.
13/03/2009

Spain - Managers look to outsource fund administration

To save more on costs which are not directly related to management, Spanish management firms are seeking to outsource their back-office activities, while, according to Expansión, actors such as BNP Paribas, Santander, Socgen (Société Générale), Bancoval (RBC Dexia) and Accenture are experiencing an increased number of inquiries from potential outsourcing clients. Management firms interested in these services include some of the top 20 firms in Spain, and particularly mid-sized banks, as well as foreign management firms. Outsourcing administration activities may bring savings of up to 30% on fixed costs. Among the larger actors in management, only Bankinter has outsourced its fund administration, to Accenture.
13/03/2009

Germany - Allianz to invest EUR10bn in real estate

Stefan Brendgen, the new CEO of Allianz Real Estate Deutschland GmbH, announced at the MIPIM conference in Cannes that the German insurance firm is planning to invest about EUR10bn worldwide in real estate in the next five years, Handelsblatt reports. The investments will be financed entirely with the group’s own equity. The objective will be to increase the proportion of the portfolio allocated to real estate by half, from a level of 4% currently, and to diversify assets geographically. Currently, Allianz owns properties valued at EUR17.2bn. The insurer has also decided to ?give some air? to its portfolio, as only active management is likely to provide the target returns of 9% to 10%. To achieve this, Allianz has assembled a team of 450 people worldwide, including nearly 150 personnel in Germany.
13/03/2009

Europe - Downturn in performance for private equity

According to the European ECVA association of private equity investors, the average performance of private equity funds contracted last year by an average of 25%, while the performance of mega-funds fell by 27%, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. The number of funds fell to 128 last year, compared with 144 in 2007, and the average size of funds fell to EUR426m from EUR497m. In total, private equity funds in Europe invested EUR52.4bn last year, compared with EUR72.1bn in 2007.
13/03/2009

Europe - Savings interest rates provide support for ECB interest rate policies

La Tribune reports that the REFI is not the ECB’s most valuable tool to ensure the stability of the banking sector and to ease the bottleneck on the inter-bank lending markets, but rather interest rates on savings accounts, which have become the proving grounds for the ECB’s prime rate. Despite a higher prime rate in the Euro zone, ?the price of borrowing in the Euro zone is at similar or less expensive levels than in countries where central banks have lowered their prime rates to near-zero levels,? the newspaper points out, citing the Euribor 3-month rate, which is lower in Europe than in the USA or the UK.
13/03/2009

United States - BofA will be profitable this year

Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America, announced on Thursday that the bank was profitable in the first two months of 2009, and that he predicts that the bank will earn a profit for the year as a whole, the Financial Times reports.
13/03/2009

Germany - KKR interested in Phoenix

According to reports in Handelsblatt, the private equity investor Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) is ready to lay out EUR3bn to EUR4bn to acquire Phoenix, the pharmaceutical product wholesaler owned by the Merckle group. KKR already controls the medicine and drugstore product distributor Alliance Boots in the United Kingdom. The EUR3-4bn offer price would apply if Phoenix were completely free of debt, but the firm in fact has EUR4bn in debt due to its acquisitions in past years. Nonetheless, the firm is estimated to be healthy on the operational level.
13/03/2009

World - Number of multi-managers expected to decrease

A study by Skandia Investment Group (SIG) has found that in the next two years, the number of multi-managers is expected to fall, but that they will account for a higher percentage of total subscriptions. Jamie McLeod, CEO of SIG, estimates that the asset management sector is contracting due to the economic crisis, while the market share for multi-managers is increasing since investors and their advisors are increasingly seeking to outsource selection and monitoring of managers.According to a recent survey by SIG of 300 advisors, 46% of respondents predict that their sales of multi-managed funds will increase in 2009, while 51% estimate that they will remain at the same levels.Although many management firms set up multi-management operations several years ago in an effort to exploit that growing segment, some may have poorly appreciated the intellectual capital necessary to operate successfully in the multi-management market, and some have already succumbed to commercial pressures which they probably underestimated, says McLeod.

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