Jonathan Sharpe and Ralph Jainz, who founded Ratio Asset Management in late 2005, have decided to close the Ratio European Fund and return all assets to investors. The catalyst has been fund redemptions by two of their largest long standing investors and in the light of this and continued market uncertainty, they believe this is the best course of action for our investors. According to Financial News, the investors withdrew USD60m on total assets under management of USD160m. During 2010 the fund delivered a return of 12.7%, but this year stock selection has not proved profitable. The fund is currently down just over 4% year to date. Since its launch in February 2006, the fund produced a net return of over 25%.“We fully intend to return to the fray with another investment vehicle in the future”, Jonathan Sharpe and Ralph Jainz write in a letter to investors.

For its institutional fund SEB Europe REI, the German asset management firm SEB Asset Management has acquired a wholly-leased office building in Warsaw for EUR38m. The vendor of the 13,270 square metre property is Investec GLL Global Special Opportunities Real Estate Fund. The Polish portfolio of the various SEB AM funds now includes 8 properties, with an area of 199,200 square metres, and a book value of EUR352m.

The Libyan National transitional council has appointed Mahmoud Badi to track foreign assets belonging to the country, including those held by the sovereign fund Libyan Investment Authority, with total assets of USD65bn, and to investigate potential corruption, the Financial Times reports. Badi, who hopes that the sovereign fund will have a new board in three months, has told the Financial Times that several LIA funds have lost as much as 40% of their value in the past six months, but that asset management firms were still making millions of dollars in fees.

The Danish pension fund ATP on 25 August announced net profits of DKK8.1bn (about EUR1.1bn) for first half 2011, compared with DKK12.7bn in the corresponding period of last year. The positive bottom line is primarily due to exposure to inflation-linked bonds.Although investments generated profits of DKK8.4bn, hedging operations cost DKK1.3bn, while modifications to guaranteed pension benefits brought an improvement of DKK1bn to accounts.As of 30 June, ATP managed DKK469bn for 4.7 million policyholders. The fund delivered benefits in January-June of DKK5.5bn to nearly 813,000 pensioners.Annually updated statistics have also shown that life expectancy for those aged 65 has increased by 3 1/2 months for men, and 2 months for women.

In a notification to the Canadian market regulator, Vanguard has announced plans to launch a range of ETF funds domiciled in Canada. The range, composed of six products, will allow investors to track the evolution of the MSCI Canada index and five other equities and bond indices.

In second quarter 2011, commodity funds posted an outflow of USD3.9bn, according to statistics from Barclays Capital. All categories of products were affected, including soft commodities and energies in particular. Assets under management nonetheless remain above USD400bn, with a total as of the end of June of USD410bn.

In the past two months to the end of July, hedge funds have faced net redemptions totalling USD1.8bn, after attracting USD13.9bn in the first five months of the year, according to estimates by TrimTabs, which may yet be subject to significant corrections, as 21% of hedge fund managers have not yet disclosed figures about the evolution of their assets and their performance in the month of July.In July, multi-strategy funds attracted a record USD16.2bn. In the first seven months of the year, these funds have earned 1.4%.Fixed income funds and macro funds have seen significant inflows since the beginning of the year, of USD15.1bn for the former, and USD9.5bn for the latter. Fixed income funds have earned 5.1% in the first seven months of the year, while macro funds have lost 1%.

The BdB association of German private sector banks has told Handelsblatt that it has revised its projection of the cost of the Lehman bankruptcy to its guarantee fund downward from EUR6.7bn to EUR6.2bn.Since the beginning of 2009, banks of the association have managed to recuperate EUR1.3bn in assets from the German affiliate Lehman Brothers Bankhaus AG.

In June, even before the turmoil in the global markets, investors were already holding back from risky assets due to uncertainties over the strength of the economic recovery and increasingly visible tensions in European debt markets.According to the most recent statistics from the European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA), which brings together 23 professional associations representing more than 97% of total UCITS and non-UCITS assets, UCITS witnessed a swing in net sales in June to record net outflows of EUR29bn, after recording net inflows of EUR 22 billion in May. This turnaround in net sales is attributable to large net outflows from money market funds and reduced net sales of equity and bond funds. Long-term UCITS (UCITS excluding money market funds) experienced reduced net inflows in June of EUR 7 billion, down from net inflows of EUR 16 billion in May. Balanced funds continued to record strong net sales in June increasing to EUR 6 billion, up from EUR 5 billion in May.Bond funds, however, experienced a drop in net sales to breakeven point in June, after recording net inflows of EUR 8 billion in the previous month. Equity funds experienced a turnaround in net flows during the month to record net outflows of EUR 3 billion, after recording net inflows of EUR 1 billion last month. Money market funds experienced large net outflows in June amounting to EUR 36 billion, significantly lower than the net inflows of EUR 6 billion recorded in May.

The Liechtensteinische Landesbank (LLB) has posted net inflows in first half up slightly to CHF523m, the bank announced in a statement on 25 August. However, assets under management as of the end of June totalled CHF48.7bn, compared with CHF49.8bn as of the end of December 2010, due to the negative impact of currency exchange rates (-2.7%) and the negative performance of the market (-0.5%).

Clariden Leu, an affiliate of Credit Suisse, has appointed Marco Bartolucci as director of its Investment Products division and a member of its board of directors, effective immediately. Since 2003, Bartolucci had been head of the structured products division at Clariden Leu, a statement released on 25 August says.

WealthBriefing reports that UBS in July recruited Toby FitzGerald in Zurich as associate director. In 2008, FitzGerald founded a range of private banking services with Stephen Conolly at Credit Suisse, which offered homosexual client advisors and was aimed at gay, lesbian and transgender clients.UBS says, however, that FitzGerald will not focus exclusively on gay clients, though that possibility has not been ruled out.FitzGerald will report to Shona Baijal, executive director in the wealth management division at UBS.

Andreas Folgner, who has been at HSBC Trinkhaus for ten years, has been appointed as head of the new «corporate business» service at HSBC Global Asset Management (Deutschland). With his team, which also includes two other people, Folgner will be in charge of relationship management for major corporations and SMBs which are headquartered in Germany, Austria and Eastern Europe. He will also be in charge of development of asset management solutions for short and long-term capital investment by corporate clients.The new corporate business service is part of the Institutional & Corporate Business Germany/Austria unit at HSBC GAM Germany, led by Leonard Fröhling.

Chief financial officers are playing an increasingly important role in the definition and communication of socially and environmentally responsible policies at their businesses, a report published by Ernst & Young funds. This is for a simple reason: investors want to evaluate the financial performance of businesses in the light of their social and environmental impact. Hence the increasingly prominent place of ESG criteria in the current fiscal year, which has gradually become the province of CFOs, whose responsibilities have been enlarged into an area that extends well beyond the expertise required of them a few years ago. The CFO is now expected to lay out the sustainable development policies of businesses to investors, who now view the financial and extra-financial performance of a company as two sides of the same coin. A growing number of instruments to measure sustainable development are also a manifestation of this fundamental trend. Shareholders in companies are also tuned in to these issues: in 2011 general shareholders’ meetings, 40% of proposals voted on were related to social or environmental issues. While in 2005, only 3% of resolutions which were social or environmental in nature received 30% or more votes in favour, in 2001, 31.6% of resolutions achieved this level of support. Reporting on sustainable development has become the norm. According to Ernst & Young, an integrated report on sustainable development and financial results may become the new standard by the end of this decade.

The situation has not turned out well for John Paulson in August, the Financial Times reports. His flagship fund, Advantage Plus had lost 38.7% since the beginning of the year as of Friday, according to a source familiar with the matter. The fund has lost 22% in the first 19 days of August. Paulson suffered in particular from the plummeting Hewlett-Packard share price.

JP Morgan Asset Management on 24 August announced that it is adding to the range of products on offer on its WealthManager+ platform, with the inclusion of 51 funds from Threadneedle, bringing the number of third-party funds available to slightly over 600.

German asset manager and private bank Berenberg has recruited Max White, senior private banker at Morgan Stanley, for its British private banking affiliate, WealthBriefing reports. White becomes head of clients for the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the North-Western United Kingdom.The recruitment is the third in two months by the two directors, Fred Harvey and Ross Elder, following the recruitment of Richard Brass, who arrived in July from Schroders Private Banking, and Matthew Stemp, who will have dual duties in private banking and asset management (Berenberg Asset Management) in London and Hamburg. Stemp joins from UBS Global Asset Management.

In the past three weeks, the British hedge fund management firm Brevan Howard (USD32bn) has made more than USD1.5bn due to turbulence on the markets, because it had already been positioned to anticipate a global downturn since the beginning of the year, the Financial Times reports.Like most hedge funds, Brevan Howard has suffered due to market volatility for the past year. Recent gains, however, will allow its Master Fund, which showed neither gains nor losses for this year, to post gains of 11% YTD, according to a source familiar with the matter. This comes in an environment in which the average global macro hedge fund has lost 0.2% since the beginning of the year, according to Hedge Fund Research.

The Swiss federal financial markets surveillance authority (Finma) on 25 August published a circular which redefines its requirements for ratings agencies. It also introduces uniform conditions for ratings agencies to be recognised. Under the new rules, which will come into force on 1 January 2012, the use of credit ratings concerns not only banks and securities traders, but also insurers, Finma says in a statement. The surveillance authority has also taken into account evolutions that have taken place in Switzerland and abroad concerning ratings agencies.

Following an acquisition agreement, an affiliate of the investment fund TPG Capital will acquire a 30% stake in Saxo Bank, with an option to increase the stake to 40%. The shares will be sold by existing shareholders in the bank, including General Atlantic, an international investment fund, and Banco Espirito Santo, one of the largest Portuguese banks, among others. The founders of the firm, Kim Fournais and Lars Seier Christensen, will retain majority stakes, and will continue to serve as co-presidents of the group, even if TPG Capital does acquire a 40% stake in the firm, a statement says. The acquisition by TPG Capital is subject to approval by regulators and antitrust authorities.

Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet’s company, is going to invest USD5 billion in Bank of America. Bank of America Corporation announced on August 25 that it reached an agreement to sell 50,000 shares of Cumulative Perpetual Preferred Stock with a liquidation value of USD100,000 per share to Berkshire Hathaway in a private offering. The preferred stock has a dividend of 6 percent per annum, payable in equal quarterly installments, and is redeemable by the company at any time at a 5 percent premium. In conjunction with this agreement, Berkshire Hathaway will also receive warrants to purchase 700,000,000 shares of Bank of America common stock at an exercise price of USD7.142857 per share. The warrants may be exercised in whole or in part at any time, and from time to time, during the 10-year period following the closing date of the transaction. The aggregate purchase price to be received by Bank of America for the preferred stock and warrants is USD5 billion in cash.

The Asian management specialist Stewart Aldcroft has joined the global transaction services division of Citi, according to Asian Investor. Aldcroft previously worked at the Hong Kong management firm EIP (Enhanced Investment Products). He began on 22 August in his new role as managing director and senior advisor for investor services in the Asia-Pacific region.

The US firm Southeastern Asset Management on 24 August notified the CNMV that its stake in Ferrovial, the principal asset of the Del Pino family, has passed the 5% threshold, and stands at 5.012%, which is equivalent to about 36.76 million shares out of a total of 733.51 million.The shares, which closed EUR8.40 on Thursday, are worth EUR303.3m. They make Southeastern AM the second-largest shareholder in Ferrovial after the Del Pino family, which retains a 45.57% stake.In early August, the US management firm announced that it held a 3.07% stake in the Spanish group, which then was worth EUR166m.

In its most recent quarterly bulletin, the asset management firm of the Acciona group, Bestinver, has announced that it continued to concentrate its international portfolio in first half 2011, as the team led by Francisco García Paramés moves to place a higher level of confidence in businesses that it has known for a long time, which are well-managed, have a low level of debt, and an inexpensive share price. The average PER for the international portfolio is 7.6 times. As of the end of June, the top 12 positions in the portfolio represented nearly 64% of assets, and assets in the top 15 positions represented 70%.Bestinver also states that in first half, all funds in its range posted gains. Returns since the beginning of the year ranged from 0.63% for the Bestinver Previsión to 5.86% for the Bestinver Global.

Saint-Gobain dispose d’un volume de cash conséquent (2.8 milliards d’euros à fin décembre 2010 dont environ deux tiers au niveau de la holding; 1.3 milliards d’euros à fin juin 2011). Mais le groupe peut avoir - ce fut le cas au cours du premier semestre 2011 - à gérer des sorties importantes pour rembourser un emprunt obligataire (800 millions d’euros) ou assurer le paiement de ses dividendes (600 millions d’euros). Sur le plan opérationnel, la holding centralise et gère les entrées de cash flows et sorties d’investissement (ou d’acquisitions) de ses filiales ainsi que leurs besoins en fonds de roulement (BFR), dont le volume varie en fonction de la saisonnalité et qui, compte tenu de l’importance de leurs chiffres d’affaires, peuvent être significatifs d’une semaine à l’autre. Conséquence: l’amplitude du cash géré au niveau de la centrale peut être très forte et imprévisible. Face à cette volatilité, explique Daniel Biarneix, directeur financier adjoint chez Saint-Gobain, nous avons pour politique de ne jamais engager notre trésorerie sur le long terme, ni sur des produits risqués. Nous n’investissons que sur des supports totalement liquides (essentiellement des OPCVM monétaires), ayant des contreparties de première catégorie, dont la valeur liquidative n’est pas exposée à des variations importantes, représentant chacun une part limitée de nos placements et au sein desquels nous ne pesons qu’une faible part de l’actif total pour ne pas mettre le produit en péril en cas d’obligation de sortie rapide. J’ajoute que nous ne plaçons qu’en monnaie locale, à l’abri , par conséquent, de tout risque de change. Et les titres actions, trop volatils, nous sont interdits. Seule nouveauté depuis un an et demi environ, le groupe a investi une petite partie de ses avoirs sur des comptes à terme (CAT) qui offrent une performance supérieure tout en satisfaisant à ses impératifs de risques et de liquidité. Nous en négocions le taux avec la banque et considérons de manière très attentive les fenêtres de retrait ainsi que la durée de délais de préavis imposée en cas de sortie pour ne pas être conduits à dépasser un blocage effectif d’un mois poursuit le directeur financier. Source: L’Agefi Hebdo (numéro 288, du 25 au 31 août 2011)

Mafourmi.com est un département du cabinet de conseil en gestion de patrimoine Corbel Conseil. Lancé en mars 2009, le contrat Mafourmi.com a été crée en partenariat avec ACMN Vie et cible avant tout les femmes. Instit Invest: Votre clientèle est-elle composée uniquement de femmes ? Mafourmi.com: Oui pour la plupart. Mais nous avons des clients masculins qui sont aussi intéressés et qui le conseillent à leur femme. Instit Invest: Les femmes ont-elles des stratégies différentes de placement ? Mafourmi.com: Les hommes et les femmes n’ont pas les mêmes démarches vis-à-vis des investissements financiers. Les hommes se sentent plus invincibles et vont se tourner vers des produits plus rentables alors que les femmes cherchent des produits plus sécurisés pour financer les études de leurs enfants ou protéger leur famille. Les femmes placent environ 80% de fonds en euros et 20% en unités de compte. Les plus jeunes, âgées de 30 et 40 ans, ont des placements plus risqués et la proportion en unités de compte s'élève à 30%. Mais les femmes restent vraiment plus sécuritaires que les hommes. Instit Invest: Ces différences de genre ont-elles une incidence sur la sélection de fonds que vous proposez dans le contrat? Mafourmi.com: Les femmes sont plus sensibles donc nous avons sélectionné des fonds ISR qui respectent l’environnement, et qui rejettent la vente d’armes. Instit Invest: Avez-vous prévu des innovations dans votre contrat dans les prochains mois ? Mafourmi.com: Nous n’avons pas prévu de grosses évolutions. Le contrat est jeune et nous sommes contents des résultats du fonds en euros.

Suite à un accord de rachat, une filiale du fonds d’investissement TPG Capital va prendre une participation de 30 % dans Saxo Bank, avec une option d’augmentation de ses parts à 40%.Ces parts sont cédées par des actionnaires existants comprenant entre autres : General Atlantic, un fond d’investissement international et Banco Espirito Santo, l’une des principales banques portugaises. Les fondateurs Kim Fournais et Lars Seier Christensen conserveront l’actionnariat majoritaire et continueront à assurer la co-présidence du groupe même dans l'éventualité où TPG Capital venait à obtenir 40% des parts, précise un communiqué. La prise de participation de TPG Capital est soumise aux approbations réglementaires ainsi qu'à celle de l’autorité de la concurrence.

Le fonds de pension danois ATP a annoncé le 25 août un bénéfice net de 8,1 milliards de couronnes (environ 1,1 milliard d’euros) pour le premier semestre 2011, contre 12,7 milliards de couronnes pour la période correspondante de l’an dernier. Le solde positif est attribué principalement à l’exposition à des obligations indexées.Si les investissements ont généré un bénéfice de 8,4 milliards de couronnes, les opérations de couverture ont coûté 1,3 milliard de couronnes, tandis que les modifications intervenues dans les prestations de retraites garanties ont permis d’améliorer les comptes d’environ 1 milliard de couronnes.Au 30 juin, ATP gérait 469 milliards de couronnes pour le compte de 4,7 millions de cotisants. Le fonds a servi pour janvier-juin des prestations d’un montant de 5,5 milliards de couronnes à près de 813.000 retraités.D’autre part, l’actualisation annuelle des statistiques a montré que l’espérance de vie pour les personnes âgées de 65 ans a augmenté de 3 mois et demi chez les hommes et de 2 mois pour les femmes.

L’américain Southeastern Asset Management a notifié le 24 août à la CNMV qu’il a franchi le seuil des 5 % du capital dans Ferrovial, le principal actif de la famille Del Pino, pour atteindre 5,012 %, ce qui correspond à quelque 36,76 millions d’actions sur 733,51 millions.Ce paquet de titres, aux cours actuels (8,40 euros) représente 303,3 millions d’euros. Il fait de Southeastern AM le deuxième plus gros actionnaire de Ferrovial derrièe la famille Del Pino, qui conserve 45,57 %.Début août, le gestionnaire américain avait déjà annoncé qu’il détenait 3,07 % du groupe espagnol, ce qui représentait alors 166 millions d’euros.

La boutique de gestion alternative londonienne Ratio Asset Management, fondée par Jonathan Sharpe et Ralph Jainz fin 2005, va fermer son fonds Ratio European Fund et rembourser les investisseurs. Le déclencheur de cette décision a été des demandes de rachats de la part deux investisseurs importants. «Dans ce contexte, et compte tenu de la persistance des incertitudes des marchés, nous pensons que c’est la meilleure chose pour nos investisseurs», écrivent les fondateurs dans une lettre datée du 11 août. Selon Financial News, ces deux investisseurs représentaient 60 millions de dollars sur un encours qui en faisait 160 millions. En 2010, le Ratio European Fund avait dégagé une performance de 12,7 %, mais, depuis le début de l’année, le fonds perd un peu plus de 4 %. Néanmoins, depuis le lancement en février 2006, le fonds a enregistré une performance nette de plus de 25 %. Jonathan Sharpe et Ralph Jainz affirment qu’ils comptent revenir sur les marchés avec un autre fonds, lorsque la période sera favorable.