La Deutsche Börse a annoncé mardi qu’en application de la règle de «fast exit» l’action Bayer va remplacer celle de la Commerzbank dans l’indice DivDax. La banque, en effet, a annoncé qu’elle ne sert pas de dividende cette année. Cette modification prendra effet le 23 mars 2009.
Portée par les propos du PDG de Citigroup quant à la santé financière de son groupe, Wall Street a terminé la séance du mardi 10 mars sur un bond de 5,8% à 6926 points, rapporte La Tribune. La plupart des valeurs financières ont fortement progressé, Citigroup et Bank of America gagnant respectivement 38,10% et 27,73%.
Citigroup a été bénéficiaire en janvier-février et la banque affiche son meilleur résultat trimestriel depuis un an et demi, indique Vikram Pandit dans une note interne. The Wall Street Journal précise que les recettes d’exploitation hors dépréciations d’actifs ont atteint 19 milliards de dollars et que le bénéfice avant impôt et provisions pour crédits à problèmes devrait ressortir à 8,3 milliards, sauf si la volatilité des marchés en mars devait impacter le résultat.
Selon l’Agefi, Lazard Frères Gestion estime notamment que le choc provoqué par la crise et la chute de Lehman Brothers est susceptible de remettre en cause les pratiques de marché relatives aux valorisations des dettes bancaires subordonnées.Lazard Frères Gestion considère aussi que «les prix actuels déprimés reflètent le caractère perpétuel des titres et les incertitudes sur les paiements des coupons», poursuit le quotidien numérique.
Selon un sondage établi par Merrill Lynch et la société londonienne de recherche Campden Research, les family offices se sont largement désinvesties des actions pour se réfugier dans les liquidités, affirme le Temps. «Ces dernières ont bondi de 5 % à 26,1 % entre 2007 et 2008 alors que les actions ont chuté de 34 % à 18,3 %», note le quotidien.
Au titre de 2008, la Bundesbank a réalisé un bénéfice net de 6,3 milliards d’euros (contre 4,3 milliards en 2007) qu’elle transfère intégralement au budget fédéral, rapporte la Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Ce gonflement provient de l’extension des opérations de refinancement des banques, alors qu’il n’y a aucune provision à passer sur les devises ou le portefeuille de valeurs mobilières.Le chèque adressé au ministre fédéral des Finances si la Bundesbank n’avait pas dû provisionner 1,7 milliard d’euros, sa part des 10 milliards d’euros de refinancements de la BCE qui n’ont pas été remboursés par trois banques islandaises, une néerlandaise et Lehman.
Selon les informations du Handelsblatt, la Commerzbank, qui vient d’acheter la Dresdner Bank, songe à se défaire d’une vingtaine de participations et a choisi Goldman Sachs comme banque conseil dans ce processus. L’une des premières cessions pourrait concerner la banque privée munichoise Reuschel & Co qui avait été achetée par la Dresdner en 1970 et qui emploie 426 personnes.
Allianz Global Investors Germany (AGI) finished 2008 with assets of EUR259bn, compared with EUR290bn at the end of 2007, while net redemptions totalled only EUR1.9bn.Net outflows from retail funds totalled EUR9.9bn, due to redemptions of EUR5bn from money market funds, EUR6bn from bond funds, and EUR0.5bn from equities funds, while funds brought in subscriptions of EUR3.1bn.Institutional investors subscribed for a total of EUR8bn, of which EUR5.1bn went to Spezialfonds, and EUR2.9bn came in the form of mandates.
After net profits of GBP18.7m in 2007, F&C Asset Management has posted net losses for last year of GBP50.5m, partly due to impairment charges of GBP48.3m on management contracts resulting from the merger of F&C with ISIS Asset Management in 2004 and the acquisition of RSAI Investments in 2002. Underlying profits total GBP38.3m, compared with GBP50.2m, and net revenues total GBP229.9m, compared with GBP264.5m. F&C is maintaining its dividends unchanged at a total of 6p per ordinary share.As of the end of December, assets under management totalled GBP98.6bn, compared with GBP103.6bn twelve months earlier. The firm’s CEO, Alain Grisay, says institutional inflows totalled GBP2.4bn last year. Net subscriptions to Sicav funds leapt 102% to GBP225m.
F&C Asset Management on Tuesday announced the appointment of Michael Heemelaar as head of global credit. He was previously head of investment grade credit at Aegon Asset Management. He will be based in Amsterdam, and will report to Patrick Hendrikx, head of credit. He will be in charge of the global credit team, including five portfolio managers and one analyst. The credit division has 28 employees.
The integration of Cominvest on 12 January 2009 has brought an increase in total assets at Allianz Global Investors Germany to EUR303bn (as of the end of 2008), while AGI alone had EUR259bn. The new group’s market share in Germany represented 21.7%, compared with 18.5% for AGI alone. Following the takeover of Cominvest, Commerzbank has become the primary distribution channel for open-ended funds from AGI. The integration process will be completed in 2011, say the firm’s two CEOs, Horst Eich and Thomas Wiesemann.The group born of the merger has posted net subscriptions for the first two months of the year of about EUR2.1bn.
Olympia Capital Management will get a supervisory board and a board of directors during this year. This development to the governance at the firm will allow Marc Landeau, founder and CIO for the alternative management firm, to step back from many day-to-day directorial responsibilities.The firm will be led by the new board of directors, composed of three people: Laurent Dupeyron, deputy CEO in charge of sales and marketing development and new product creation, who will become CEO; Guido Bolliger, co-CIO, who will be appointed CIO. And Arnaud Beyssen, CFO. Landeau will continue to be present at the firm, with a seat on the supervisory board.In 2006-2007, Landeau already undertook some efforts to arrange for his succession at the firm, with Kostas Iodianidis and Matteo Perruccio designated at that time (see Newsmanagers of 05/04/2007). But the two men left the company over time. Bolliger took over from Iordanidis after his departure in mid-2008, while Dupeyron in September of last year replaced Perrucio, who left early in 2008.
Banco Sabadell has completed its audit of assets in the portfolio of its real estate fund Sabadell BS Inmobiliario, which will result in depreciations of 4.9%, less than the 7.5% write-downs for the portfolio of the Santander Banif Inmobiliario, Expansión reports. The BS Inmobiliario fund is the third-largest Spanish real estate fund, with assets of EUR960m.
The Cominvest brand, which was acquired by Allianz Global Investors Deutschland on 12 January of this year, will disappear at the end of 2010; this year, employees in Frankfurt and Luxembourg will be grouped together and the IT systems will be harmonised. According to Horst Eich, one of the two CEOs at AGI, there will be some redundancies. According to consultants, a reduction of 30% to personnel at Cominvest (currently 600 employees) may be expected, Handelsblatt reports.Eich has also announced that ?a triple-digit number? of retail funds from AGI and Cominvest (currently 500 funds in total) will be closed or merged. AGI is interested in Cominvest’s research and its expertise in diversified funds aimed at institutional investors.
Economic research is questioning many common assumptions about equities, Le Temps reports. In an article entitled ?Are stocks really less volatile in the long run?? Lubos Pastor and Robert Starnbaugh claim that the volatility of equities is actually higher in the long-term than in the short term. Over the past 206 years on the stock markets (1802-2007), volatility has been 21 to 53 points higher over 30 years than over one year.
Alain Grisay, CEO of F&C Asset Management, was celebrating the end of 15 months of uncertainty on Tuesday, as Friends Provident announced that it would distribute its 52% stake in the management firm to its own shareholders by mid-2009, after negotiations with potential buyers fell through, the Financial Times reports. The management firm estimates that uncertainties about control of its capital cost it GBP2bn in withdrawals by consultants concerned about instability.
Fund People relays reports in Expansión that the retirement savings supervisory committee at Telefónica has instructed the management firm, Fonditel, to adopt a more defensive, transparent and liquid investment policy, with risk controls that offer more guarantees and protection. As of 31 December, assets totalled EUR3.09bn, of which 38% were in equities, 14% in alternative assets, and the rest in bonds. After losses of 26.86% in 2008, the plan has lost a further 6.97% since the beginning of the year.
The Lyxor Hedge Fund Index has posted losses of 0.71% in February, but for January-February, the fund shows performance of 0.81%. The Lyxor hedge fund indices are investible hedge fund indices. Their performance is calculated on the basis of performance and assets in funds of the Lyxor platform.In the first two months of the year, the heaviest losses were for long/short equity long bias funds (-6.79%, including -4.83% in February), and emerging markets funds (-5.43%, including -2.51% in February). The best-performing strategy was fixed income arbitrage, with returns of 5.55% (of which 1.31% was in February), special situations, and short-term CTA, with gains of 3.03% (and respective losses of 1.01% and 0.26% in February).
According to the US headhunting group Options Group, as many as 20,000 jobs may be lost in alternative management this year, which would represent 14% of total personnel, following 10,000 jobs lost in 2008, Fondsprofessional reports, citing Bloomberg.Hedge Fund Research reports that 920 hedge funds, or 12% of all funds, were closed last year. Of the 6,800 funds remaining, 70% posted losses in 2008, meaning that they will not be able to charge performance commissions until they have made up the lost ground.
Schroders has been issued a sales license in Germany for the Asian Local Currency Bond sub-fund of its Luxembourg Sicav fund Schroder International Selection Fund (ISF). The product, launched on 9 May 2008, had assets of USD48m as of the end of January, and is invested, as its name indicates, in Asian debt denominated in local currencies. The fund is managed by How Phuang Goh Goh (head of the Asia ex Japan bond management team) and Chow Yang Ang, with a strategy that combines fundamental and technical elements. Front-end fee and management commission for the product, whose benchmark is the iBoxx Asia Custom Index, are 5% and 1%, respectively.
The IntercontinentalExchange Inc. (ICE) has opened its compensation platform for credit default swaps (CDS), IEC Trust, for business. The platform was issued an operating license by the SEC on Friday, the Wall Street Journal reports.
According to a survey by Merrill Lynch and the London-based research fund Campden Research, family offices have widely withdrawn from equities and taken refuge in cash, Le Temps reports. ?Cash allocations have risen from 5% to 26.1% between 2007 and 2008, while equities have fallen from 34% to 18.3%,? the newspaper reports.
Clients of Safra Group have been offered a package of compensation for the money they lost in the fraud orchestrated by Bernard Madoff Investment Securities, the Financial Times reports. Safra Group denies that it was proactive in promoting Madoff funds. But investors and their lawyers have told the FT that Safra representatives in the United States and Europe actively promoted a fund known as Zeus Partners Limited to clients in Latin America.
Following client redemptions estimated at 20% of total assets in the second half of 2008, hedge funds will pay out redemptions amounting to a further 15% to 30% of their assets in 2009, Le Temps reports. Simon Davies, chairman of Threadneedle, says one of the causes of these redemptions is the dependence of hedge funds on private banks who include them in their portfolios. ?Liquid managers like us wind up getting all the redemption demands, to compensate for freezes at other funds,? Davies explains to the Swiss newspaper. As a result, Davies predicts, ?alternative management firms will seek to reduce their dependence on funds of funds and banks to capture new inflows from clients.? However, he admits, banks will ?remain important as they provide access to smaller investors and private clients,? Le Temps adds.
Handelsblatt reports that LGT Bank, owned by the royal family of Liechtenstein, has sold its fiduciary specialist affiliate LGT Treuhand, which was at the origin of a recent tax evasion scandal in Germany, to First Advisory Group, headed by the lawyer Herbert Batliner, who has also been behind several legal proceedings in several countries.
The Euro, reinvigorated by the wave of optimism which provoked strong increases on the global financial markets on Tuesday, 10 March, has risen against the US dollar to USD1.2632, up from USD1.2602 on Monday.
Banco Popolare has become the first Italian bank to turn to government assistance, the Financial Times reports. The bank will issue EUR1.45bn in bonds, which will be subscribed to by the govenrment.
All regular money market OPCVM funds in the product range from Crédit Agricole Asset Management (CAAM) are now undergoing a process of ESG (environment, social and governance) filtering, said Patrick Simeon, head of bond management, on Tuesday. In principle, they satisfy all the criteria for IDEAM, the provider of extra-financial analysis for the group. Unlike other promoters, who have confronted some deficiencies relatively recently in the area of transparency, CAAM does not need to launch new products which are specifically ESG-aware. The management firm can simply incorporate an ESG constraint which will hardly modify its existing funds. The first will be a money market fund in the ?credit? category, probably by the end of first half.This type of product appears to interest a fairly varied client base, which includes institutionals, businesses, pension funds, and client associative structures of the Crédit Agricole and LCL networks.
IPE.com reports that the French national pension fund, the Fonds de réserve pour les retraites (FRR), is still seeking a management firm for an EUR800m US equities mandate, after choosing seven managers for equities mandates totalling EUR2.3bn.
?Regular money market products have become a segment of excellence in management at CAAM,? and are clearly a winner in the current economic environment, in which ?liquidity and security are the most important factors for performance in the strict sense,? Pascal Blanqué, director of management at CAAM Group, stated on Tuesday.Currently, assets under management in regular money market funds from Crédit Agricole Asset Management (CAAM) have a total of about EUR64bn, compared with EUR40.18bn at the beginning of the crisis, in late June 2007. That represents an increase of more than 59.7%, according to Theirry Darmon, deputy director of Euro and credit fixed income, and Patrick Wimeon, head of money market management. At the end of 2007, assets totalled EUR62.69bn. As of the end of February, when assets totalled EUR63.41bn, these assets were distributed, according to an increasing ?defensiveness,? with 10.26% in Euro zone government bond products, 18.69% in AAA rated debt (Euro zone government bonds and equivalent corporate and bank debt with a rating higher than BBB and short maturities), 25.07% in intermediary credit (the same categories of assets plus AAA-rated ABS, which are now an extinct class), 27.94% in credit (including intermediary credit plus BBB-rated credit with short maturities), and 18.03% in credit (which includes credit, and BBB-rated credit with longer maturities). The range includes 26 master funds and 24 feeder funds.