Net outflows of assets from the Wealth Management & Swiss Bank division of UBS in third quarter totalled CHF16.7bn, while they totalled CHF9.9bn for Wealth Management Americas, and CHF10bn, compared with CHF17.1bn in second quarter, for the Global Asset Management division, the group announced on Tuesday morning. As of the end of September, total assets came to CHF2.258trn, compared with CHF2.250trn as of 30 June. The Wealth Management & Swiss Bank division has seen a decline in its pre-tax profits to CHF792m, compared with CHF932m in second quarter, while Wealth Management Americas had CHF110m in profits, compared with losses of CHF221m. Global Asset Management reported increased pre-tax profits of CHF130m, up from CHF82m, largely due to an increase in revenues from performance commissions (particularly for alternative and quantitative investments) and management commissions.

Hedge Week reports that hedge funds in the Netherlands gained an average of 1.31% in the month of September, according to the Finles/IEX index. Over nine months, the index shows gains of 11.48%, compared with 10.8% for the HFRX Global index. Since the beginning of the year, the top five hedge fudns are HIQ Invest Market Neutral Fund (+40%), Antaurus Europe Fund (+36%), IdB Real Estate Fund (+34%), EV Smaller Companies Fund (+31%), and Farringdon Alpha One Fund (+30%).

There is a growing number of UCITS III-compliant funds of funds available, Financial Times Fund Management reports. Following 3A, Collins Stewart has launched a fund of this type, entitled Alternative Strategies Fund. HSBC Alternative Investments will follow suit by the end of the month, with AvantEdge.

Six themed funds will become a front line in the sectoral equities offerings from Robeco from 30 November 2009, Robeco Deutschland has announced. Existing products which are unable to adapt to long term thematic developments will undergo a change in investment policy or will be merged or closed. The Netherlands-based management firm is placing a particular emphasis on its “solid” range of emerging markets and US equities products, with a particular emphasis on sustainable development. The six new thematic funds, all of them registered in Luxembourg, will be: Robeco New World Financials Equities, the result of a change in investment policy for the Financial Equities fund; Robeco Agribusiness Equities, the result of the absorption fo the Food & Agri Equities into the Agribusiness Equities; Robeco Health & Wellness Equities, a transformed version of the Healthcare Equities. The fund will have SAM Sustainable Asset Management as sub-advisor; Robeco Infrastructure Equities, which will continue in its current form and absorb the Industrial Equities fund; Robeco Consumer Trends Equities, the result of a change in investment policy for the Consumer Goods fund, which will absorb the IT Equities and Telecom Services Equities funds; lastly, the Robeco Natural Resources Equities, the result of a change to the management policy of the Energy Equities fund, while the Materials Equities and Utilities Equities funds will be closed.

In October, funds on sale in Spain posted net subscriptions of EUR701m, compared with net outflows of EUR1.2bn in September, and net inflows of EUR402m in August, which at the time were the first positive results since April 2007. Net subscriptions in October were the highest since March 2006, when inflows totalled EUR1.98bn, the Inverco association of asset management firms reports. Total assets also increased once again, to EUR163.45bn as of 31 October, from EUR162.78bn at the end of September, and EUR162.84bn as of the end of August. This is the fourth month in 2009 in which volumes of assets under management have increased. The three management firms with the strongest net subscriptions in October were Invercaixa Gestión, with EUR584.8m, Bansabadell Gestión with EUR151.5m, and Multiactivos, with EUR125.9m, while the top asset management firm in the sector in terms of assets, BBVA Asset Management, attracted EUR110m. The heaviest net outflows were from UBS Gestión, with EUR146.5m, Ahorro Corporació Gestión, with EUR140.8m, and DWS Investments, with EUR100.3m.

Spanish clients, in keeping with their tendency to behave as savers rather than investors, preferred less risky investments in October, with net subscriptions of EUR2.2bn to money market funds, Cinco Días reports. This category of products benefited both from an exodus from short-term bond funds, and from new subscriptions: since the beginning of the year, net inflows to money market funds totalled EUR16bn, Ahorro Corporación estimates.

Legg Mason is in the early stages of planning the launch of a new absolute return bond fund to be run by its affiliate Western Asset Management, Citywire has learned.

Charles Schwab on Monday announced the launch of its first in-house ETF products. The eight products, managed by Charles Schwab Investment Management, will all be based on equities indexes. From today, four ETFs from Charles Schwab will be available to investors. They are the Schwab U.S. Broad Market ETF, Schwab U.S. Large-Cap ETF, Schwab U.S. Small-Cap ETF, and the Schwab International Equity ETF. Four more products will follow in December: the Schwab U.S. Large-Cap Growth ETF, Schwab U.S. Large-Cap value ETF, Schwab International Small-Cap Equity ETF, and the Schwab Emerging Markets Equity ETF. These ETF products “have some of the lowest fees on the market,” Schwab says in a statement, and they will be exempt from online transaction commissions for clients of the broker. The funds will be listed on NYSE Arca, and may be traded on other stock exchanges.

Sharia-compliant equities underperformed the markets as a whole in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman), the United States, and Europe in third quarter, according to the latest Shariah Scorecard from Standard & Poor’s. Islamic investors adopted a wait-and-see attitude while the financial sector began to rebound. The S&P Global BMI Shariah Index earned 15.46% returns in the three months to 30 September, while the non-Shariah S&P Global BMI Index, which includes a higher weighting of financial sector equities, gained 18.67% in the same period.

Man Investments and Credit Suisse on 2 November announced the launch of a joint managed accounts project, to respond to growing demand from investors for increased transparency, liquidity and controls. By the terms of the agreement, Man Investments, which for more than ten years has been developing a managed accounts platform which will continue to be available directly to Man clients, will be responsible for surveillance of managers and portfolios, risk management, reporting and investment advising for the joint project. Credit Suisse, for its part, will be responsible for risk transfer, and will contribute its expertise in structured products, as well as its strong balance sheet, which will open up possibilities for protection, dynamic leverage, and increased levels of liquidity.

BNY Mellon has completed the acquisition of Insight Investment Management from Lloyds Banking Group. Insight Investment’s assets under management, net of identified internal assets that will be retained by another part of the Lloyds Banking Group, are approximately USD133 billion. It joins the other investment boutiques at BNY Mellon Asset Management. With this acquisition, BNY Mellon will have more than USD1 trillion in assets under management.

According to a survey undertaken by the advising agency NMG, and commissioned by National Ethical Investment Week and the independent financial advisers’ association, 87% of independent financial advisors (IFAs) now advise green and ethical investments, compared with 70% one year ago. The percentage of IFAs who say information on responsible investment is appropriate has increased from 15% last year to 34% this year. One third of advisors surveyed say that it is still difficult to find information on SRI, compared with 37% last year.

According to the 2 November issue of Ignites Europe, Diana Mackay and her husband Rodney Williams will be leaving their jobs as co-CEOs of Lipper FMI at the end of the year.

On Monday, Deutsche Börse announced that it has launched its pan-European trading platform Xetra International Market (XIM), which will allow Xetra cilents to trade European large caps and to settle their transactions on their national market. Initially, XIM will offer this service for the most liquid shares of Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. In a few weeks, they will be joined by Finnish and Spanish equities. As of mid-January 2010, XIM will also cover Italian equities. At the end of this initial launch period, 96 shares denominated in Euros will be available on XIM. These include shares belonging to the DJ Euro Stoxx 50 index, as well as other shares with a high level of liquidity which feature in other indexes. Transactions on XIM will be settled by Eurex Clearing at a competitive price on national markets. Clearstream will serve as an interface between Eurex Clearing and these markets.

Les Echos reports that the US research and consulting firm Tabb Group estimates that dark pools account for 4.1% of trading volumes in Europe by value. Opaque trades of securities may be expected to increase in the next twelve months, to account for 7% by 2010, Tabb Group predicts.

The international Tax Justice Network (TJN) on 2 November published an alternative list of tax havens, which takes into account a lack of transparency in 60 jurisdictions and their size in terms of international financial activity. The network of researchers and activists, who closely monitor the negative impact of tax evasion, fiscal competition, and tax havens, has created the Financial Secrecy Index (FSI), composed of 12 criteria considered far more pertinent than the OECD criteria, noting that the importance of a tax haven, and hence its attractiveness to clients, depends less on its tax rates than on the degree of opacity it offers. Contrary to what may have been previously thought, the major actors in financial opacity are not small isolated islands, but rather rich countries which have set up their own special opacity zones, often related to satellite jurisdictions, which serve as a stepping-point in the transmission of illicit capital flows to the world’s major capital markets. At the top of the rankings established on the basis of these criteria is the US state of Delaware, due to its commitment to non-transparency, its marked lack of cooperation, and its failure to comply with international standards. Second place goes to Luxembourg, which has attracted a highly significant hedge fund activity, and which bankers describe as the “guardians of the private sphere.” Number three is Switzerland, one of the few countries to receive a rating of 100 out of 100 for opacity, and whose reputation does not appear to be improving much despite extensive efforts, according to TJN. In fourth place is the Cayman Islands, whose authorities continue to strongly deny the nation’s status as a tax haven, followed by the City of London, a state within a state, says TJN, which sits like a spider in the centre of a web which includes half of the 60 jurisdictions in the index. Although it is less opaque than the other jurisdictions analysed, “London operates on such a scale and is politically so unaccountable that it has the potential to do much more harm than most of its competitors,” says TJN.

The chairman of the China securities regulatory commission (CSRC), Shang Fulin, last week made an appeal to the Beijing government to modernise the asset management industry in China, Asian Investor reports. The management industry has undergone unprecedented growth, but still lacks crucial benchmarks and frameworks. In particular, Fulin insisted on the necessity of channeling capital from institutional investors to serve long-term objectives. Among the reforms it has called for, the regulatory authority is seeking to advance the development of fund ratings agencies, and to initiate a redevelopment of the architecture of commissions paid between fund issuers and product distributors. It is also working to simplify the product licensing process. Fulin also emphasized four major areas in which the Chinese management industry is still lagging behind. Management firms need to protect the interests of investors, improve the quality of the products and services they provide, continue to innovate, and improve their respect for compliance.

The management of the Luxembourg-registered fund Legg Mason Asia Pacific (ex Japan) will be transferred by Legg Mason to its affiliate Batterymarch on 30 November. The new manager will replace Esemplia Emerging Markets, the commercial name of Legg Mason International Equities, Investment Week reports. The investment objective of the product will not change, but the management method will be different. Legg Mason has announced that Batterymarch will probably increase the number of positions in the portfolio to 120-160, and that the turnover rate will be 80-100%.

Globalfoundries, a joint venture from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Advanced Technology Investment Company (ATIC), itself owned by the Abu Dhabi sovereign fund Mubadala, on Monday announced the appointment of Alan E. “Lanny” Ross, former CEO of Broadcom, as its interim chairman. Ross replaces Hector Ruiz, who is taking a “voluntary leave of absence” with immediate effect, until his resignation, submitted in September, takes effect on 4 January 2010. Ruiz, the former CEO of AMD, is one of the people suspected of having provided insider information to several hedge funds, including Galleon, For the moment, he is not facing criminal proceedings.

No trace has yet been found of the approximately EUR600m which evaporated in the K1 hedge fund fraud at whose centre was Michael Kiener, now widely referred to as the “German Madoff.” Depository banks would be able to provide details to aid in this search, but Augsburger Aktienbank, Comdirect and Frankfurter Fondsbank, all of which which were named by Hedgeconcept as banks that may have served in this role, have all denied to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that they acted in this capacity. Bloomberg reports, meanwhile, that Kiener is seeking to sell his luxury villa in Delray Beach, California, for USD23m, to partly reimburse defrauded investors.

Le développement du marché primaire sera cependant freiné en 2010 par la demande des investisseurs, estiment les spécialistes

Deux gérants basés à Hong-Kong de Stark Investments, l’un des plus gros hedge funds opérant en Asie, créent leur propre société, Orchard Capital Partners, rapporte le Wall Street Journal. Teall Edds et Stu Wilson investiront dans de la dette et des opérations de type private equity, un domaine que Stark délaisse en Asie. Toutefois, les deux gérants gardent un lien avec Stark en lançant un fonds actions dans lequel la société investira environ 1 milliard de dollars.

Le fonds EQT V du suédois EQT (famille Wallenberg) a acheté pour 200 millions d’euros 100 % du câblo-opérateur bulgare Eurocom et 70 % de son concurrent CableTel. Les vendeurs sont respectivement le capital-investisseur Warburg Pincus et Gene Phillips. Ron Finley restera actionnaire minoritaire à 30 % de CableTel. A terme, les deux entreprises seront fusionnées pour former le plus gros câblo-opérateur de Bulgarie et de Macédoine. Il est prévu des investissements dans les réseaux ainsi que dans de nouvelles offres de produits en télévision numérique, en haut débit et en téléphonie.

L’autorité de tutelle du secteur financier en Irlande a accordé une licence bancaire à BNY Mellon. La nouvelle entité, The Bank of New York Mellon (Ireland) Limited, va permettre au groupe d’offrir une large gamme de services à sa clientèle institutionnelle et de renforcer ses capacités d’intervention à partir du marché local.Jusqu’ici responsable pays pour l’Irlande, Joe Duffy prend la direction opérationnelle de la banque et restera basé à Dublin.

Selon The Motley Fool, il est toujours très difficile d'évaluer précisément le niveau des frais d’un fonds d’investissement, même si l’on se réfère au total des frais sur encours, le fameux TFE ou TER pour les Anglo-saxons. Le TER n’inclut pas par exemple les droits de timbre (SDRT). Il est à noter toutefois que Vanguard fait cavalier seul dans l’industrie en facturant d’entrée les droits de timbre.Une procédure plus juste pour l’investisseur de long terme, estime Vanguard qui ajoute que le paiement des droits permet aussi d’améliorer les tracking errors pour ceux des fonds affectés par les SDRT. The Motley Fool souligne que la trcking error est l’autre composante que les investisseurs feraient bien de prendre en compte. Un fonds bon marché qui s'écarte trop de son indice n’a rien à voir avec un fonds un peu plus cher mais qui réplique son indice.

Pour le premier semestre de l’exercice au 31 mars, le bénéfice net de Macquarie a chuté de 21 % à cause de charges exceptionnelles de 414 millions de dollars australiens, mais le groupe s’attend à une forte hausse de son résultat pour octobre-mars, si bien que le bénéfice net de l’ensemble de l’exercice pourrait marquer une hausse de 10 % à 480 millions de dollars australiens (294,34 millions d’euros), rapporte la Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Toutefois, Macquarie traîne encore des moins-values non réalisées de 335 millions de dollars australiens, la différence entre la valeur comptable et la valeur de marché de ses fonds.

Fitch Ratings a retiré la note Asset Manager «M2» qu’elle avait assignée à KBC Asset Management pour ses activités de gestion d’actifs basées à Bruxelles et Luxembourg, «en raison d’un manque d’informations suffisantes pour maintenir la notation». L’agence ne couvrira plus KBC AM.

Après 282 millions de souscriptions nettes en août et des remboursements nets de 1,56 milliard en septembre, les fonds commercialisés en Espagne ont enregistré des rentrées nettes de 800 millions en octobre, ce qui constitue le meilleur résultat depuis avril 2006, rapporte Expansión, citant Ahorro Corporación. Les plus fortes souscriptions ont concerné les fonds monétaires, les diversifiés à majorité obligataire et les fonds d’actions, qui ont drainé 1,2 milliard d’euros. En revanche, les diversifiés à majorité actions et les obligataires court terme ont accusé les sorties nettes les plus importantes.

L'émetteur Source a lancé le 30 octobre un nouvel ETC sur la plate-forme Xetra, le S&P GSCI Enhanced Crude Oil SourceT-RTC qui pour la première fois permet de tirer parti de la performance du contrat de futures sur le WTI Crude Oil. Principales caractéristiques ISIN : XSO454792184Frais de gestion : 0,49%Politique de distribution : capitalisation

La justice allemande enquête sur K1 Group, une société de gestion alternative à qui étaient confiés environ 1 milliard de dollars en début d’année. Il est accusé d’avoir trompé plusieurs grandes banques. Barclays, JP Morgan Chase, BNP Paribas ou Société Générale sont touchées. Barclays risquerait de perdre 220 millions de dollars dans cette affaire, et BNP Paribas, 60 millions, indique Le Temps.