Le groupe Deloitte a annoncé le 16 septembre que Ellen Schubert et Ray Iler allaient renforcer l'équipe hedge funds au sein de la practice Asset management services. Dix associés de Deloitte ont parallèlement rejoint l'équipe hedge funds.Ellen Schubert a rejoint Deloitte le 1er septembre au poste nouvellement créé de chief adviser au sein de la practice Asset management services. Elle était précédemment managing director et responsable mondial de l’activité Fixed Income Hedge Fund Business chez UBS Investment Bank. Ray Iler a rejoint Deloitte en juillet dernier et sera responsable des questions relatives à l’audit, la fiscalité et le conseil. Il était précédemment directeur financier chez Quadrise Canada, une société spécialisée dans les technologies gazières et pétrolières.

Pour 400 millions de dollars, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) obtient des options sur 20 % du capital d’Eastman Kodak et des obligations nanties rémunérées à plus de 10 % par an, ainsi que deux sièges au board, rapporte la Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Kodak pour sa part compte placer auprès d’investisseurs institutionnels un emprunt convertible de 300 millions de dollars.

StartFragment--> Legg Mason a annoncé que ses encours sous gestion avaient augmenté à environ 693 milliards de dollars au 31 août, soit une augmentation de 5 % par rapport au 30 juin, rapporte le Wall Street Journal. Cela reflète la hausse des marchés et le ralentissement des rachats. Par ailleurs, Bill Miller, le gérant emblématique de Legg Mason, a déclaré qu’il pensait continuer sa carrière dans la société de gestion après y avoir travaillé 27 ans.

Dans une lettre aux investisseurs lue par le Financial Times, PAI a fait une offre informelle pour réduire de moitié les engagements des investisseurs à son nouveau fonds de 5,4 milliards d’euros, qui avait été gelé après l’annonce surprise du départ de deux dirigeants.

Le rapprochement entre La Française des Placements et UFG, annoncé fin avril, se concrétise. Fin juillet, les opérations de cessions et d’apports de titres ont été réalisées et LFP est devenue filiale à 100 % du groupe UFG, a annoncé mercredi soir Alain Wicker, président de LFP, lors d’une réunion destinée à la clientèle privée. Parallèlement, les actionnaires de LFP – essentiellement les salariés de LFP mais aussi le groupe Monceau et MACSF - avec les dirigeants d’UFG ont pris 20 % d’UFG, aux côtés du Crédit Mutuel Nord Europe descendu à 80 % du capital. «Cela permet de conserver notre approche entrepreneuriale», indique Alain Wicker.La nouvelle entité portera le nom d’UFG-LFP. Mais s’agissant de la gestion de valeurs mobilières cotées, c’est l’appellation LFP qui restera. Cela reflète le fait que, dans ce domaine, ce sont les équipes de LFP qui absorbent celles d’UFG, représentées par UFG IM et Alteram. D’ailleurs, le personnel concerné (gestion et commercial institutionnel France) doit prochainement déménager du 173 boulevard Haussmann, le siège d’UFG, au 17 rue de Marignan, les locaux de LFP. Le nom UFG sera mis en avant pour tout ce qui est immobilier et gestion d’actifs réels.Outre ce déménagement, les deux autres prochaines étapes de ce rapprochement sont l’obtention du feu vert de l’Autorité des marchés financiers et la tenue du comité d’entreprise.En attendant, la nouvelle organisation de UFG-LFP se dessine. Xavier Lépine sera président du nouvel ensemble, tandis qu’Alain Wicker devient vice-président du conseil de surveillance. Patrick Rivière sera directeur général, en charge du développement. Côté commercial, Thierry Sevoumians s’occupera du réseau, Nicolas Duban des institutionnels en France, tandis qu’Alain Gerbaldi sera responsable de l’international et de la gestion privée.

Athymis Gestion, société de gestion de portefeuilles spécialisée en multigestion pour le compte de conseillers en gestion de patrimoine indépendants, dont Fortis Investments est actionnaire, annonce le lancement d’Eurus, un fonds de fonds à la gestion diversifiée prudente, se positionnant entre un compte en euros et des gestions diversifiées plus dynamiques.Dans le détail, les actifs en actions sont plafonnés à 40 %. La poche en question est investie dans des fonds affichant, notamment, des styles différents afin d’accroître la diversification de l’ensemble. Le portefeuille est également constitué de nombreuses classes d’actifs peu corrélées entre elles. Ainsi, le fonds sélectionne des portefeuilles d’obligations privées, d’émissions financières, de crédit gouvernemental, d’arbitrage actions ou taux, de produits de volatilité, d’obligations convertibles, … L’objectif du fonds de fonds, composé de quinze à vingt sous-jacents, est de générer une performance la plus régulière possible. Caractéristiques Code : FR0010772129 Frais d’entrée : 3 % maximum Frais de gestion : 1,20 % Montant de la part : 100 euros Minimum à la souscription : 1 part

KNEIP, prestataire de services dans le secteur des fonds d’investissement, vient d’acquérir l’agence de presse La Cote Bleue à SIX Telekurs, le troisième plus grand diffuseur d’informations financières en Europe - propriétaire en France d’Europerformance. La Cote Bleue est un fournisseur important de cotations des valeurs nettes d’inventaire de fonds pour les médias français. Elle traite plus de 2 500 OPCVM domiciliés en France et s’est également spécialisée dans la diffusion d’informations financières destinées à tous les types de médias.

In second quarter, Hedge Fund Research (HFR) reports 292 liquidations of hedge funds, compared with 376 between January and March, while the number of new funds launched totalled 182 compared with 148, the Wall Street Journal reports. Meanwhile, the crisis has taken its toll on performance commissions, which have been in decline for three quarters in a row, and averaged 19.18% in second quarter, compared with 19.34% in first quarter.

M&G Investments has announced that on 1 September it recruited Alexander Müller has relationship manager for German banks, and that on 1 June it recruited Sultan Deniz as sales support for the banking sales team. They join the distribution team led by Marcus Perschke, who is also in charge of the banking sales force. Müller joins from the wealth management arm of Citibank, while Deniz had been in sales at Schroder Investment Management GmbH since early October 2008.

From 18 September, DJE Kapital is reopening its DJE Real Estate fund to redemptions; they had been frozen since the end of October 2008. The unique feature of this product, compared with German-registered funds which were frozen at the same time, is that it is a fund of funds, and DJE Kapital says that most of the target funds it invests in have now reopened their redemptions. In addition, the fund is registered in Luxembourg (launched on 5 July 2004), with assets currently totalling USD796.65m. The fund has lost 5.26% since the beginning of the year, but has earned 12.10% in the past five years, or 2.31% per year. Ulrich Kaffarnik, CEO of DJE Investment SA, states that it has been possible to increase the liquidity of the fund in the past few months, and the cash reserves are now at considerable levels. In addition to this, the fund’s portfolio has been reprofiled, which has increased the agility with which the management team may profit from opportunities for returns on situations in a difficult market. The fund has withdrawn its investments from open-ended and semi-institutional real estate funds which had a low liquidity level during the crisis, in order to take up positions on shares in realty firms, realty sector equities funds and well-rated bonds, says Jens Ehrhardt, chairman of the managing board at DJE Kapital.

The Wall Street Journal reports that seven management firms have now signed up to the code of conduct laid out by Andrew Cuomo, attorney general of New York. The four new firms are HM Capital Partners, Levine Leichtman Capital Partners, Access Capital Partners, and Falconhead Capital, which will now no longer make use of placement agencies. As a result of the legal investigation into the “pay-to-play” scandal, these firms have agreed to pay USD4.5m into the New York State Common Retirement Fund. In total, the seven management firms will pay USD56.5m to the pension fund.

In the fiscal year ending on 31 March, net profits for the severeign fund Temasek Holdings fell to SGD6bn, from SGD18bn the previous year. Ho Ching, CEO of the fund and wife of the prime minister, says that the fund “did not expect the rapidity and ferocity of the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression.” Assets as of the end of March totalled SGD130bn, compared with a peak of SGD185bn twelve months earlier, but had risen back to SGD172bn as of the end of July. In the 2008-2009 fiscal year, Temasek sold assets worth SGD16bn and made investments worth SGD9bn, of which SGD3bn were participations in capital increase operations at businesses including Standard Chartered, DBS group Holdings and CapitaLand. Among the assets that were sold, a 3.9% stake in Bank of America and a 2% stake in Barclays led to significant capital losses. The average annual performance of the fund since its creation in 1974 fell to 16%, compared with 18% as of the end of March 2008.

Legg Mason has announced that its assets under management had increased by about USD693bn as of 31 August, a 5% increase over 30 June, the Wall Street Journal reports. This reflects rises on the markets and slowing redemptions. Meanwhile, Bill Miller, the emblematic manager at Legg Mason, has announced that he is considering ending his career at the asset management firm after 27 years of employment there.

For USD400m, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) has obtained options on 20% of capital in Eastman Kodak, and high-yield bonds which pay more than 10% per year, as well as two seats on the board of directors at the business, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. Kodak, for its part, is planning to issue convertible bonds to institutional investors to raise USD300m.

The Indiana Public Employees’ Retirement Fund has allocated Martin Currie Investment Management a mandate for USD210bn in global equities ex US, which will be managed by James Fairweather, CIO and head of global equities. The Scottish management firm says that it has obtained new global equities and global equities ex US mandates worth USD900bn since the beginning of the year. Global equities represent 23% of assets at Martin Currie (USD16.3bn).

Jupiter Asset Management has announced a strategic alliance with deVere & Partners, an independent financial consultancy. Under the agreement, deVere & Partners will offer both the Jupiter Global Fund Sicav and the Jupiter Merlin Sicav, comprising 11 sub-funds, through its network of 350 consultants, who operate from 40 offices around the world. The UK asset manager will potentially have access to 50,000 clients in over 100 countries.Kevin Scott, executive director, international at Jupiter AM, says: «deVere offers significant potentiel for Jupiter to develop both brand awareness and sales internationally».

BNY Mellon Asset Servicing has announced that it has been granted a servicing mandate from ETF Securities for its Physical Swiss Gold Shares ETF. The mandate includes trustee services, accounting, and fund administration, as well as settlement.

According to reports in Expansión, the BBVA will sell 80% of its 1,350 branches in Spain, which it decided to sell off a year ago, to RREEF Alternative Investment (a fund from Deutsche Bank), for EUR1.2bn. The operation, which is known internally under the name “Proyecto Árbol,” will be a sale & lease-back deal. The US-based fund Area will be the junior partner of RREEF in the transaction. Expansión states that RREEF may also acquire the remaining 200 branches in the next two to three weeks, for EUR400m, but the financing for these acquisitions has yet to be secured. One of the unique characteristics of the operation is that BBVA will be able, within the overall agreement, to change the branches it occupies depending on the market situation, which would make it possible to restructure the network.

Asian Investor reports that American Century Investments (USD80bn in assets) has recruited Mirando Poon, cive president for business development for Asia ex Japan at Pictet. She will report to Tony Archer, who recently joined ACI (see Newsmanagers of 2 May). The Asia-Pacific team is hierarchically beneath London, and relies technically (for back office and operation functions) on Kansas City.

Marcus Kemmer, CEO of the management firm TMW Pramerica Property Investment, has told the Börsen-Zeitung that the open-ended real estate fund TMW Immobilien Weltfonds will reopen redemptions, which were suspended in late October 2008, during fourth quarter, as the cash rate will have risen back to 20-25% by the end of October 2009. TMW is expecting redemption demands of about EUR100m, on assets of EUR1bn. Kemmer also states that the TMW Pramerica Property Weltfonds will now position itself as the first “green” real estate fund in Germany.

FTSE has removed Iceland from the investable universe that make up its indices following the fall in its financial markets after the collapse of its three main banks, says the Financial Times. It is the first time the global equity index provider has taken a country off its lists since it established its global equity index series in September 2003.

Les Vingt-Sept parleront d’une même voix au G20 sur les rémunérations et Bâle 2

According to statistics from Lipper Tass reported by Hedge Week, hedge funds in second quarter experienced net outflows of USD45.74bn, 61% less than in January-March. In the twelve months to the end of June, net redemptions totalled EUR327.02bn. All strategies except emerging markets, global macro and managed futures underwent net redemptions in second quarter. Outflows totalled 4.24% of assets as they stood at the beginning of the quarter, following 9.57% outflows in first quarter. However, due to positive market effects, assets as of the end of June totalled USD1.21trn, compared with USD1.18trn at the end of March.

Partners Group on Wednesday announced the soft-closing of the Partners Group Real Estate 2008 fund with EUR275m. About 40% of this amount has already been invested. The Swiss alternative management firm points out that the secondary market in particular has good potential currently, due to the short supply of capital. One of the transactions realised is a secondary investment in eight buildings in China, and Partners Group has managed to obtain a 50% discount on the value of these properties, as the vendor was in need of liquidity.

The French-registered FCP fund CAAM AFD Avenirs Durables, created on 4 March 2009, was unveiled this Wednesday in the presence of French Finance minister Christine Lagarde. The public-private partnership product, which has EUR48m in seed capital from Crédit Agricole Asset Management (CAAM), will aim to collect EUR300m in assets in the next 18 months, says Yves Perrier, president and CEO of CAAM Group. Jean-Michel Severino, CEO of the French development agency (AFD), emphasized that the “inventor of the idea” was Xavier de Bayser, chairman of IDEAM Asset Management, the SRI specialist firm of the CAAM Group. IDEAM will manage the new product, and Michèle Jardin, CEO, says the fund has returned 4% since its launch, a rate of return similar to that of the Eonia. The investment strategy for the product is prudent. About 70% of the portfolio is invested in primarily money market and bond products from CAAM, while the remaining 30% are oriented to development aid, with two third invested in bonds from the AFD, and the remainder is used to co-finance projects that create economic and social value in developing countries, largely via subscriptions for shares in Proparco, an affiliate of the AFD dedicated to financing the private sector.

Invesco Ltd.'s PowerShares unit plans to launch an exchange-traded fund that will invest mostly in Build America Bonds, taxable debt instruments that are part of the federal stimulus plan, says the Wall Street Journal. PowerShares Build America Bond Portfolio will invest in securities that comprise the Merrill Lynch Build America Bond Index.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) has announced that it is signing up to the new principles to align the interests of investors and managers in private equity, which were unveiled on 8 September by the Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA), which has 215 members with about USD1trn in assets under management in private equity. The three main principles are the alignment of interests with commissions that “reasonably” cover costs, a substantial investment on the part of general partners, and a balanced distribution of profits. The principles also extend to governance, with higher powers for limited partners when a fund is dissolved or suspended, and the independence of the auditor. Lastly, in terms of transparency, general partners are responsible for providing more details to investors on revenues from commissions and the performance of firms whose shares are in the portfolio. The ILPA principles are available on the website http://www.ilpa.orgAs of 31 July, private equity assets at CalPERS totalled USD20.6bn; the fund also had unfunded commitments for a further USD21.9bn in private equity.

The day after a federal judge rejected an out-of-court settlement between the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Bank of America over USD5.8bn in bonuses the latter paid to its employees on the day before its acquisition of Merrill Lynch on 23 December, the attorney general of the state of New York, Andrew Cuomo, yesterday subpoenaed five board members at the American bank, Les Echos reports. Like judge Jed Rakoff, who on Monday rejected the compromise with the SEC, the attorney general accuses the directors of the bank, which received USD45bn in federal assistance, including USD20bn to aid in its absorption of Merrill Lynch, of knowingly concealing the bonus payments until after the closing of the merger deal on 1 January.

La Tribune reports that BNP Paribas and Natixis have completed their voluntary redundancy plan in France. According to internal sources, BNP Paribas is said to have achieved its target of 204 departures in France, of which 125 were in banking and 69 at the BNP Paribas trading affiliate. Natixis, for its part, is aiming for 286 departures, of which 130 would be from finance and investment banking (BFI), and 156 from Eurotitres. In the BFI division, “only” 76 voluntary redundancies have been achieved, while the other 75 requests do not fall within the area of potential layoffs. Between 50 and 70 positions at Banque Privée 1818, which has about 400 employees, will also be cut in the next few months.

According to the Financial Times, citing sources close to the firm, Carlyle is once again planning an IPO. No decisions have been taken yet, and any potential offering would come only after six to nine months.