Jesús Martín del Burgo, directeur du département produits pour la Péninsule ibérique et l’Amérique latine, a été promu directeur des ventes pour le Chili et le Pérou de DWS Investments, rapporte Funds People.L’intéressé sera basé à Santiago du Chili et sera subordonné à Pedro Dañopbeitia, directeur général de DWS Investments pour l’Ibérie et l’Amérique latine. Il avait rejoint DWS en 2006, en provenance de Previgalia Gestión.
The British asset management firm Schroders has launched a fund dedicated to small caps in emerging markets of Asia ex Japan.The Schroder Small Cap Discovery Fund will invest in 70 to 100 businesses with the objective of generating returns above the index at a lower volatility level than the index.The fund will be managed by Matthew Dobbs, currently head of international and global small caps.
Henderson will close 12 funds as part of a restructuring of its product range for British retail clients. The products will be merged into other funds. At the same time, two funds will change their investment strategy. Among the funds to be merged, the Henderson European Value Fund will be absorbed into the Henderson European Growth Fund, managed by Richard Pease and Wimon Rowe. The Henderson US Opportunities Fund will be integrated into the Henderson US Growth Fund, managed by Tom Asico, Coralie Witter and Doug Rao. The Henderson European Smaller Commpanies fund will be merged into the Henderson European Focus Fund, managed by John Bennett. In terms of strategy changes, the Henderson Diversified Absolute Return Fund will become the Henderson Multi-Manager Diversified Fund, and the Henderson Higher Income Fund will be converted into the Henderson Global Equity Income Fund. The two-stage process, which follows the acquisitions of New Star and Gartmore, will begin in May 2012. It will eliminate redundancies and concentrate on a smaller number of strategies.
GLG (Man Group) has announced that it has temporarily closed two funds dedicated to Japan to new investors. The Japan CoreAlpha fund, with assets under management of USD1.1bn, and its offshore version, GLG Japan CoreAlpha Equity fund, have been the victims of liquidity problems on the Japanese equity markets. The closure of the fund will be effective from 30 March this year. The reopening of the fund will be announced when normal market conditions have returned in Japan.
The German asset management firm Deka Immobilien has announced that it has sold a 16,000 square-metre office property locate din Milan to the Italian institutional real estate fund Inarcassa RE de Fabrica Immobiliare SGR. Deka acquired the property in 2004 for one of its institutional real estate funds.
Janus Capital International Limited is launching the Janus Asia Fund, a sub-fund of its Irish Sicav. The fund will be available to institutional and retail investors.
Jesús Martín del Burgo, director of the products department for the Iberian peninsula and Latin America, has been promoted to the position of head of sales for Chile and Peru at DWS Investments, Funds People reports.Del Burgo will be based in Santiago, Chile, and will report to Pedro Dañopbeitia, CEO of DWS Investments for Iberia and Latin America. He joined DWS in 2006 from Previgalia Gestión.
More than 50% of acquisitions planned in emerging markets founder on due diligence issues, according to a PwC study of mergers and acquisitions in emerging markets (“Make your acquisitions succeed in emerging countries.”) For successful acquisitions, the impact in terms of value created or destroyed is far higher than that observed on mature markets. On the basis of our sample, the most unfavourable acquisitions resulted in losses for the investors of an average of half the initially invested capital.In an analysis of over 200 transactions, PwC has identified seven areas of difficulty in the processing of transactoins in high-growth countries: lack of transparency in terms of financial information, difficulty in justifying high levels of valuation, risk associated with con-compliant commercial practices, post-acquisition integration difficulties, the emergence of conflicts between partners, and the intervention of public bodies.To confront these difficulties, PwC proposes several measures to manage risks and increase the odds of success in emerging countries. Among the measures PwC quotes are identifying a strategic rationale, upstream transactions, on-site visits and the establishment of best practices in terms of conduct in transactions, which should be adapted to the specificities of local markets, in order to confront high market risks.
Leland Clemons, head of US capital markets at iShares, has been appointed with immediate effect as head of EMEA iShares Capital Markets, a newly-created position. He will report to Joe Linhares, head of iShares, EMEA. Clemons joined BlackRock in 2005.In his new role, Clemons will be director of a team in charge of assisting intermediary clients, private banks and wealth managers to make ETP transactions more efficiently.
The victims of Florian Homm, who lost USD200m in the fraud he orchestrated, have engaged the private detective Josef Resch to find the hedge fund manager, formerly of Absolute Capital Management (ACM), who has been on the run for 4 and a half years. To sweeten the pot, they are offering a reward of USD1.1m to anyone who can provide information leading to the apprehension of the fugitive, Capital reports.
The chairman of Proxinvest, Pierre-Henri Leroy, is calling for more transparency about management pay scales. France may once have been a leader in areas of governance, but it “still has a long way to go to catch up,” says Leroy, announcing the publication of the 13th Proxinvest annual report on management pay scales in the SPF 250, and the first ECGS report on European management pay scales.In order to restore trust between shareholders and management, Proxinvest proposes three priorities, and suggests that voting should be annual on management pay scales (so-call “say on pay”), or else a remuneration report at general shareholders’ meetings. This annual vote, whether it be informational or binding, has gradually become a legal requirements, in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Sweden and Norway. Proxinvest suggests that France should be inspired by the Dutch model, which has led to good elvels of dialogue between issuers and investors.Another priority would be to provide information on the pay tables about the individual cost of additional supplementary retirement schemes in addition to the complementary plan, in line with the transparency of major European firms. The quality of performance conditions also need to be improved, with the introduction of more long-term criteria, for example, looking over at least three years for option or equity plans, and quantifying the objectives in order to allow shareholders to verify performance.
On 20 January, UBS Luxembourg launched the Emerging Markets Small Cap Fund from its Sicav UBS (Lux) Equity Sicav, a fund which has recently been licensed for sale in Germany.The portfolio of 100-200 positions, managed by Joseph Devine, will focus on emerging markets small caps, including consumer sector and infrastructure businesses, with a bias for South Africa and South Korea presently (13% each), as well as Brazil (10%). Small caps generally benefit more from local economic growth than other shares.CharacteristicsName: UBS (Lux) Equity SICAV - Emerging Markets Small Caps FundISIN code: LU0727654609 P-Acc share class in US dollarsManagement commission: 2.10%
US banks are pushing for their activities in the ETF sector not to be included in Volcker rule, the Financial Times reports. Many banks are acting as “authorised participants” for ETFs. But this activity may be threatened by the Volcker rule, which would limit speculative trading by US banks.
In an improving market environment, investors are showing renewed confidence in international equities, according to the most recent BofA Merrill Lynch survey, undertaken between 3 and 9 February, of a sample of 277 respondents with total assets of USD783bn.Equity allocations in February have been at monthly highs since the beginning of 2011, with 26% of respondents overwight in equities, compared with 12% the previous month. Appetite for cyclical sectors (industrials, materials) has been accompanied by a disaffection for defensive sectors (pharmaceuticals, telecommunications). Overweight positions on cash have fallen to 13%, from 27% in January. Emerging markets are by far the favourite global region, with all other regions underweight. European investors are returning strongly to banking sector shares.
The general hedge fund index from Lyxor Asset Management (Société Générale) for January shows returns of 1.30% since the beginning of the year (and of 1.67% as of 7 February), at 952.Of the 15 strategies covered by the global index, only four show losses, including long/short equity short bias, with losses of 5.83%, and CTA short term, which has lost 1.02%.The most lucrative strategies have been long/short equity long bias (+4.76%) and special situations (+4.54%).
On Tuesday, in a notice to the SEC (13D filing), John Paulson refuted arguments by management at Hartford Financial Services Group, which is refusing to break up into two entities, and seeking to retain life insurance activities, on the one hand, and property and casualty insurance activities on the other, within a single business, the Wall Street Journal reports. The disagreement has swomewhat poisoned relations between the head of Paulson & Co (USD24bn in assets) and the company. Last week, the hedge fund manager asked the heads of Hartford to “do something drastic” to boost the firm’s share price.
The asset management firm Métropole Gestion, which offers an SRI fund, Métropole Value SRI, in partnership with the University of Auvergne, has announced that it is extending the agreement in question, and has announced that two new developments will soon be unveiled in this area.The two actors have developed a ratings system which provides Métropole Gestion with internal extra-financial criteria, which managers apply before financial criteria. Ultimately, the portfolio has both best-in-class and best in effort management.Isabel Levy, CIO, says that the SRI fund has held up well in periods of crisis, as in 2011. Métropole Value SRI, which has assets of about EUR15m, had losses last year of 20.47%, compared with 22.45% for its non-SRI alter ego, Métropole Euro. Also as of 31 January 2012, in the past month, as for the past three and six-month periods, the SRI-labelled fund shows better results.
Of CHF5bn in assets under management in diversified products, Lombard Odier Investment Managers (LOIM) has CHF2.5bn in assets managed with a multi-asset class risk parity approach, and CHF400m in single asset class risk parity management. In 2011, LOIM took on a net total of CHF400m for the strategy, largely as part of a very large mandate from an Asian sovereign fund.The methodology, which complies with the UCITS directive and may use a short component, introduces genuine diversification in terms of the risk budget inherent in each asset class and sector, rather than setting an allocation and sticking to it.In addition, LOIM, which focuses exclusively on equally-weighted liquidity risks (2/5 equities, developped and EM, 2/5 govies, 1/5 commodities), is able to provide a tactical overlay in order to optimise the results of risk parity.The Swiss asset management firm is hoping to receive a license from the AMF in the near future, to allow it to release a Luxembourg-registered UCITS compliant fund in France which allies risk parity and tactical alpha.
Christian Haake, who has been director of distribution via IFAs of retirement planning products in southern Germany since April 2006, has been promoted to the position of senior relationship manager in the team handling distribution to insurers at DWS led by Harald Salzgeber, Das Investment reports.
Philip Hinrichsen, who had previously been responsible for investor relationship management at Fundmatrix, is joining KBC as head of distribution for investment concepts specialised in the areas of equities and bonds. Hinrichsen will report to Nunzia Thiriot, head of asset management at KBC Bank Deutschland. He will be in charge of advising fund of fund managers, wealth managers and institutional investors in Germany.
UCITS funds last year posted outflows of EUR90.3bn, compared with inflows of EUR172bn in 2010, according to statistics from the European financial and asset management association (EFAMA).Long-term UCITS funds finished the year with net outflows of EUR57bn, compared with net inflows of nearly EUR300bn (EUR297bn) in 2010.Money market funds saw net outflows of EUR33bn, compared with EUR125bn in 2010.Non-UCITS funds, for their part, have seen net inflows of EUR104bn, compared with EUR164bn previously. Dedicated funds attracted EUR93bn, compared with EUR144bn in 2010. Overall, UCITS and non-UCITS funds have posted net inflows for the year of EUR13bn, compared with EUR335bn in 2010.In the month of December alone, bond funds have posted net inflows for the first time since July 2011, totalling EUR4bn, compared with redemptions of nearly EUR11bn in November. Outflows from equity funds slowed to EUR6.2bn from EUR16.3bn in November.
Chris Bullock, portfolio manager, on Tuesday in Paris unveiled the Euro Corporate Bond sub-fund of the Luxembourg-registered, UCITS-compliant Sicav Horizon from Henderson Global Investors, a product whose objective is to generate performance one percentage point higher than the benchmark, the iBoxx Euro Corporates, after fees.So far, the sales trajectory for the fund, launched on 18 December 2009, has been impeccable, as assets reached EUR150m as of the end of 2011, and now total about EUR250m. Net inflows last year totalled about EUR80m, and the fund has outperformed its benchmark by 1.80 points in 2011 and 8.33 points since launch. Bullock says the capacity limit for the product is somewhere between EUR1m and EUR2m. Henderson will promote the fund particularly in France.
Following Diapason, the British firm Heptagon Capital (USD5.5bn in assets as of the end of January) has become the second foreign asset management firm to open its doors on the Spanish market since the beginning of the year, Funds People reports. The firm has registered its Irish-registered Sicav Heptagon Fund, which includes two sub-funds managed externally, with the CNMV. The sub-funds include a US bond fund, managed by Yacktman AM, and a global bond fund, managed by Helicon.A third sub-fund, focused on emerging markets equities, the Oppenheimer Developing Markets, is in the process of being launched.
In 2011, for the first time, brand has become a decisive element for fund selectors in Europe, who represent EUR2trn in assets. The Berlin-based publication Fund Buyer Focus (FBF) has published its pan-European Fund Brand 30 rankings (see attached document), which surveys the preferences of these intermediaries. BlackRock and Carmignac Gestion have both gained one place in the rankings compared with last year, taking first and second place, dethroning JPMorgan.FBF estimates that the size of BlackRock was the determining element, while Carmignac benefited from a rise in business from intermediaries and demand from final investors. BNP Paribas and Amundi lost 18 and 16 ranks respectively.More generally, the authors of the study estimate that in the next few years, cost efficiency will be an increasingly important factor. Fund selectors are also attaching growing important to knowledge of local markets and to ability to respond to developments in these marktets, which would work to the advantage of asset management boutiques.
Newton, an affiliate of BNY Mellon Asset Management, has announced that it has recruited Sebastien Poulin as high yield analyst. Poulin, who joined the asset management firm from Standard and Poor’s, will join the team dedicated to fixed income, led by Parmeshwar Chadha. The team manages over GBP1bn.
L’assureur London & Victoria (LV=) a annoncé qu’il propose désormais un plan d'épargne retraite chargé à seulement 0,25 % en sus des commissions de gestion.Cette offre concerne 130 fonds de 16 gestionnaires (Artemis, BlackRock, BNY Mellon, Fidelity, Henderson, Invesco Perpetual, Investec, JPMorgan, Jupiter, Liontrust, M&G, Martin Currie, Premier, Schroders, State Street Global Advisors et Threadneedle).Elle s’applique aussi bien pour le premier montant de 75.000 livres (chargés actuellement à 0,55 %) qu’aux montants suivants juqu'à 1 million de livres, actuellement chargés à 0,35 %. Au-delà d’un million de livres, le prélèvement demeure inchangé à 0,10 %.
The insurer London & Victoria (LV=) has announced that it will now be offering a retirement savings plan that charges only 0.25% in addition to management commissions.The offer extends to 130 funds from 16 management firms (Artemis, BlackRock, BNY Mellon, Fidelity, Henderson, Invesco Perpetual, Investec, JPMorgan, Jupiter, Liontrust, M&G, Martin Currie, Premier, Schroders, State Street Global Advisors and Threadneedle).The new offer will be applicable to initial investments of GBP75,000 (currently charged at 0.55%), and to subsequent investments up to GBP1m, which are currently charged at 0.35%. Above GBP1m, the fee remains unchanged at 0.10%.
According to a survey undertaken in December by SCM Private of 1,000 people, 63% of British respondents would be prepared to invest more in funds if their providers provided more information about fees, strategies and portfolios, Handelsblatt reports.89% would like to see managers publish explanations of all fees charged, while 83% would like to have more complete information about the way in which managers invest the capital entrusted to them.Only 19% know exactly what the management and administration commissions they pay are for.
The British Financial Services Authority (FSA) has published a guide aimed at financial advisors, to help them to comply with Retail Distribution Review (RDR) legislation by 31 December 2012.The FSA points out that the new rules will affect all actors, including significant changes and marginal adjustments. The guide recommends that advisers restructure their fees, so as to charge for advising without penalising clients, to whom the adviser is responsible for explaining what the various commissions are for.
GAREAT est une structure de marché, opérationnelle en France depuis le 1er janvier 2002, dont la vocation est de gérer la réassurance des risques attentats et actes de terrorisme au nom et pour le compte de ses Adhérents (sociétés d’assurance françaises ou étrangères), afin de leur permettre de faire face aux pertes causées par des sinistres dommages consécutifs à des attentats ou actes de terrorisme subis sur le territoire français, indépendamment du pays où a eu lieu l’acte de terrorisme. Les placements de GAREAT se décomposent en trois poches: trésorerie (produits monétaires), obligations court terme (CDN) et produit structuré. En 2011, à la suite d’un appel d’offres, GAREAT a sélectionné un partenaire bancaire dans le cadre d’un produit à capital garanti, pour une vingtaine de millions d’euros. L’objectif, selon Jacques Deparis, Président, est de capter plus de rendement (2 à 3%) en profitant qu’un horizon de placement plus long sur un tiers du dispositif assurantiel. Ce produit structuré vient tout juste d'être mis en place, sans l’aide d’un consultant. L’expérience pourra être reconduite, en fonction des résultats à venir.