The real estate asset management firm Commerz Real (EUR43bn in assets) has announced the acquisition for about EUR32.7m of the office property Espace Dumont d’Urville, in the 16th district of Paris. The vendor of the 3,100 square-metre property is Klépierre (BNP Paribas group). Espace Dumont d’Urville, which is wholly leased to SEGECE, an affiliate of Klépierre, will be added to the portfolio of the institutional real estate fund Euro Office 1.

According to a study by S&P cited by the WSJ, about 60% of equities fund managers lagged behind their index over five years to June 30. With the exception of emerging market debt funds, at least 75% of bond fund managers trailed behind their index. The news is grist for the mill of supporters of passive, index-based management. But Jane Li of FundQuest (BNP Paribas) says that “the less efficient the market, the more potential there is for a manager to add value.”

Following a decision by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to toughen regulations, Barclays Global Investors has ceased sales of new shares in its iShares fund based on the S&P GSCI Commodity index, L’Agefi reports.

HSBC Global Asset Management will launch its first ETF, based on the FTSE 100, this Monday, Financial Times Fund Management reports. In total, the firm is planning to launch 30 to 50 ETFs in the next three years.

The Korean firm Mirae Asset Global Investments has appointed Myung Joo Park as managing director of its European activities, the British press reports. Park, who will be based in London, joined Mirae Asset in 2005. He previously worked in the international division of the firm in Korea. Recently, Mirae told Newsmanagers that it would soon register several funds for sale in France.

Assets in the private wealth management department of Saxo Bank as of the end of first half totalled EUR1.88bn. The bank specialised in online trading of investments says in a statement that wealth management activities are in a phase of “rapid growth,” and that since the end of first half, assets under management have increased to EUR2.15bn.Saxo Bank earned pre-tax profits in first half of EUR7.39m, vs EUR21.77m . Three factors contributed to this decrease, according to the bank: increased costs related to the opening of international offices; investment in products; and the bank’s contribution to the Danish state guarantee plan.

Graham Ashby, along with his colleagues at Credit Suisse, Michael Crawford, Marcus Chandler, and Mira Bhogaita, have been hired by LV=Asset Management to take over the UK Growth and UK Equity Income funds, currently managed by Chris Price, head of the equities team, Investment Week reports. LV=AM manages about GBP1.1bn in UK equities. The funds which were managed by Ashby at Credit Suisse have been outsourced by the asset management firm to Premier Asset Management.

The number of mergers and acquisitions in the asset management sector has fallen by one third in the first half of the year, Financial Times Fund Management reports, citing statistics from Jeffries Putnam Lovell. Between January and June, 73 such operations took place, compared with 109 in the corresponding period of last year. Independent asset management firms have replaced banks and insurance companies as the most active buyers, FT FM observes. In the next 12 months, Jeffries estimates that mergers and acquisitions will be driven by the buyer side.

With the recovery of the markets and the dissipation of investors’ fears, merger and acquisition activities in financial services in the next twelve months will be fed by buyers seeking to increase their size rather than by vendors seeking to survive, Jefferies Putnam Lovell predicts in the study “ Winds of Change: First-Half 2009 M&A Activity in the Global Asset Management, Broker/Dealer, and Financial Technology Industries.” The authors find that the motivation of vendors in the past nine months, including the need for capital and survival, will now be replaced by more traditional catalysts for merger and acquisition activities, such as diversification of products, distribution of capital necessary to initiate new phases of growth, and needs of liquidity on the side of vendors. Jefferies Putnam Lovell estimates that financial establishments that sell off asset management units will seek to retain minority stakes in them, largely in order to profit from the economic recovery.

Standard Life Investments has added to its fixed income unit with the appointment of Andrew Fraser as investment director specialised in banking. He previously worked at BlackRock, as a director in the European credit analysis department. In the fixed income team, Fraser will report to Craig MacDonald, director of Investment Grade - corporate bonds. He will be in charge of analysing the European and British banking sectors.

Hermes Fund Managers has appointed Neil Williams as chief economist on the fixed income team. Williams was previously head of research and strategy for government bonds at Mizuho International, in London. He will report to Penni Coe, director of government and inflation-indexed bonds.

The Dutch management firm APG, which manages the EUR180bn assets of the eponymous pension fund, has appointed Angelien Kemma as CIO and CEO of APG Asset Management. She replaces Roderick Munsters, who has moved to Robeco. Kemna was previously professor at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, after spending several years at ING Investment Management, as CIO Global and then CEO of ING IM Europe.

L’Agefi Switzerland reports that the international rankings of the “Individual Income Tax Rate Survey 2009,” published yesterday by KPMG, reveal that the impact of the financial recession on taxation have made Switzerland more attractive compared to other countries. Compared with 2008, it has gained five places, putting it in 13thplace in the rankings, revealing that tax pressure is mounting in the worst-affected countries, such as Ireland, Iceland, and Great Britain. Since Switzerland has not seen any increase in the maximal income tax rate, “developments in the four corners of the globe may make the country even more attractive in terms of taxation,” KPMG says.

Despite over EUR9bn in subscriptions, assets in funds of funds on sale in Germany fell by 19% in second half 2008 to a total of EUR44.9bn as of the end of December. A study by Fidelity International has found that open architecture is continuing to progress, as funds which invest in products from third-party promoters now represent 62% of total assets, compared with 56% one year previously (see Newsmanagers of 27 August 2008). However, Andreas Schmid, head of distribution for private banks and wealth managers at Fidelity International for Germany, agrees that funds of funds have probably been the winners out of the introduction of withholding flat tax in Germany on 1 January 2009, as the transfers from one product to the other within a fund of funds are now not taxable.The study also finds that diversified funds of funds as of the end of December represented 77% of total assets, compared with 70% twelve months previously. Equities and bond funds of funds represented 14% and 5% of total assets, respectively, compared with 23% and 7%.

La Tribune reports that, with the exception of the United States and Switzerland, governments which have provided assistance to banks in the past twelve months by buying a stake in their capital have made potential losses totalling USD10.8bn (EUR7.54bn), according to figures from the Financial Times. Great Britain has come out of it worst, with losses of EUR3.8bn. Due to interest on the loans provided to banks, France has made a profit of EUR1.16bn.

For a United Nations conference on climate change to be held in December in Copenhagen, the EIRIS agency has analysed the 300 largest publicly-traded companies in the FTSE All World Index to determine what actions they are taking to confront climate change.The study (“Climate Change Compass: The Road to Copenhagen”) is that the activities of 35.6% of these companies highly or very highly influence climate change. But 33% of them are not making any effort to reduce the risks related to climate change which affect them. The survey also finds that 99% of businesses which have a high or very high impact on climate change have published documents explaining how they plan to address this challenge, compared with 84% in 2008. This increase is due to increase awareness both within businesses and at the instigation of investors.Lastly, EIRIS points out that nearly three quarters of the businesses concerned, compared with 61% in 2008, say they wish to respect objectives and international regulations to combat climate change.

Les Echos reports that shareholders in the two largest alternative stock market operators in Europe, Chi-X and Turquoise, are undergoing changes. Turquoise has retained the Swiss bank UBS to find potential buyers for the business. Shareholders in Chi-X, for their part, are being openly wooed by Chi-X Global, an entity owned by the Japanese bank Nomura, which already controls more than half of capital in the operator via the broker Instinet. Falling volumes and competitition have accelerated the maturity of this young segment.

The FSA, the British financial market regulator, has launched an investigation into trading operations on credit default swaps (CDS) from Pernod-Ricard undertaken by the investment bank Calyon. The subject of the investigation is several very large transactions undertaken just before the group laucnehd a capital increase in April.

La Tribune reports that two former bank directors, Erastus Akingbola and Cecilia Bru, who were dismissed on 14 August for poor management, including fraudulent use of credit facilities, insider trading, market manipulation and money-laundering, are being sought in Nigeria by the economic and financial crimes commission.

Inspired by the agreement between UBS and the United States, the Canadian government is giving a look to the bank accounts that its taxpayers hold in Switzerland, Le Temps reports.“We would like to obtain information. UBS tried to slow things down, but in early September, we will meet with our lawyers (and UBS) to obtain this information,” the Canadian minister of internal revenue, Jean-Pierre Blackburn, told the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper.

The international association of the hedge fund industry, AIMA (Alternative Investment Management Authority), has welcomes a decision this past weekend by the FSA (Financial Services Authority) to commission a study of the impact the planned hedge fund directive would have on the United Kingdom. The British financial market authority has asked the research firm CRA International to study the costs and benefits of the legislation, focusing on the impact of the project on investment portfolios, costs to companies and investors, on the functioning of the market and on systemic risk, and finally, to study the effects of the legislation on financing for small businesses and European competitiveness. The findings of the study will be presented by the end of the year. The Association favours a revision of the draft directive in its current form. Though it approves of some planned measures such as systematic reporting of appropriate data to national supervisory authorities, the Association argues that some areas of the planned legislation, such as those concerning leverage, depositories, and marketing, need to be revised and corrected to avoid counter-productive effects. The AIMA, which has already called on the European Commission to order a pan-European impact study, hopes that the FSA’s initiative will inspire the Commission to take that step. “We hope that the European Commission will follow suit on the pan-European level. It would be extraordinary if there were not an appropriate evaluation on the European level of the impact of a directive which could have very serious consequences.” Like the AIMA, the FSA, whose annual conference for asset management, to be held on 17 September in London, will be dedicated to the subject of the planned European directive, is said to be favourable to a revision of the Commission’s draft directive, which it considers too constraining for the hedge fund industry. The British government is concerned about the impact of the draft directive on the competitiveness of an industry which in European terms is largely centred in London. The United Kingdom’s efforts to produce a revised version of the text will be likely to provoke some debate in Europe. France, among others, is widely known to favour increased surveillance of the activities of hedge funds.

According to statistics from the BVI association, German asset management firms in first half posted net subscriptions of EUR3.7bn, of which EUR2.2bn were for institutional funds and EUR1.5bn for open-ended funds, while assets increased by about 4%, to a total as of 30 June of EUR1.2627trn, compared with EUR1.2175trn as of the end of December. The Kommalpha agency points out that inflows in January=June were saved by db x-trackers (Deutsche Bank) and ETFlab (Deka), whose ETF funds alone attracted more than EUR4.8bn, while money market funds, for example, saw net redemptions of more than EUR11bn. The financial crisis is working to the advantage of Germany as a site of fund production, as German-registered open-ended funds have attracted about EUR6.5bn in assets, while Luxembourg-registered funds have seen net outflows of nearly EUR7.4bn. Kommalpha says this is due to the fact that Luxembourg funds are often more complex structures oriented to equities.

The new regional government of Pudong has signed an agreement in principle (MOU) with the Blackstone Group to create the first private equity fund denominated in Chinese yuan in the region of Shanghai-Pudong. The Blackstone Zhonghua Development Investment Fund will raise about CNY5bn, and will invest as its first priority in the Shanghai region and its surroundings.

Keith Sloane, senior vice president of Hartford Mutual Funds, has announced that the affiliate of The Hartford has posted net subscriptions in second quarter and that assets totalled USD40.7bn as of the end of July, compared with USD28.7bn as of the end of first quarter (they were USD50bn as of the end of third quarter 2009), the Wall Street Journal reports. Hartford Mutual Funds underwent net redemptions in fourth quarter 2008 and first quarter 2009, but subscriptions increased by 37% in second quarter 2009 compared with first quarter.The Hartford’s focus on wealth management has led to a centralisation of mutual fund, retirement and variable annuities affiliates into a new investment and retirement division. The goal is to reach USD100bn in assets under management.

L’activité sur le marché primaire devrait en revanche ralentir, la plupart des émetteurs ayant déjà couvert leurs besoins de financement

Les syndics de faillite des huit sociétés de portefeuille des frères Jesús et Jaime Salazar (les anciens dirigeants et propriétaires de Grupo SOS) risquent d'être liquidées puisque leur actif est essentiellement constitué d’actions du groupe agro-alimentaire qui ont servi de nantissement pour l’obtention de crédits bancaires, rapporte Expansión. A eux deux, les frères Salazar détenaient encore officiellement vendredi 25,70 % de Grupo SOS.

A fin juin, l’encours des 27 fonds ISR disponibles sur le marché espagnol représentait 844,8 millions d’euros, soit 12,3 % de moins qu’un an plus tôt, ce qui représente seulement 0,52 % des actifs totaux, contre 1,3 milliard fin 2007. Ces produits sont proposés par 19 sociétés de gestion d’actifs, dont -parmi les étrangères- Dexia (15 fonds), Pictet (un fonds) et Aviva (2 fonds).

Selon les statistiques de la Banque d’Espagne, les ménages espagnols détenaient fin juin 130,14 milliards d’euros sous forme de parts de fonds d’investissement, soit 18,3 % de moins qu’un an auparavant et le niveau le plus bas depuis septembre 2002, rapporte Cinco Días. Toutefois, la baisse en rythme annuel se ralentit : elle était de 20,7 % en mai et de 21,8 % en avril, la plus forte contraction remontant à novembre 2008 avec 29,2 %.

En juillet, les hedge funds ont enregistré leur troisième mois consécutif de hausse de leurs encours, rapporte Eurokahedge. Les actifs ont ainsi gonflé de près de 11 milliards de dollars sur le mois pour s'établir à 1.350 milliards de dollars. Cette hausse est essentiellement liée à l’effet performance, les souscriptions nettes s'étant limitées à 2,1 milliards de dollars. Quelque 15 milliards de dollars ont été investis dans les hedge funds, mais 12,9 milliards en sont sortis.

BNP Paribas va céder sa division de banque de détail en Argentine à Banco Santander Río. Il s’agit d’un réseau, composé de 17 agences situées dans la ville et la province de Buenos Aires, qui dessert une clientèle de plus de 30 000 particuliers et 900 entreprises. La banque française reste néanmoins présente en Argentine via son offre de produits et de services aux entreprises et aux sociétés d’investissement.