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06/07/2009

Nomura fait ses débuts à Ryiad

Nomura Holdings a lancé dimanche ses activités en Arabie Saoudite après avoir obtenu de la Capital Market Authority du Royaume une «commencement letter», rapporte The Wall Street Journal. Le groupe nippon est habilité à offrir des services de finance d’entreprise, de marché des capitaux et de gestion de fortune à des clients saoudiens et il pourra aussi faire fonction d’agent pour des valeurs mobilières étrangères.
06/07/2009

Warren Buffett offre $ 1,5 milliard à des fondations

Selon une notification à la SEC, Warren Buffett a offert des actions de son holding Berkshire Hathaway pour environ 1,5 milliard de dollars à des organisations caritatives, dont 1,25 milliard de dollars à la Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, rapporte la Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
06/07/2009
Fonds

Les actions font un discret retour dans les portefeuilles

Dans son sondage mensuel, l’association américaine des petits porteurs (AAII) a constaté en juin que la part dédiée aux actions atteignait 50%, contre 41% au printemps. Mais il s’agit, selon Le Temps, d’un retour à défaut de mieux. Les placements monétaires ne rapportent quasiment rien, les matières premières sont redevenues chères et les obligations sont soit trop difficiles d’accès en raison d’un marché capté par les investisseurs institutionnels, soit trop risquées, analyse le quotidien.
Fonds
06/07/2009

Credit Suisse launches a fund of funds

Credit Suisse has applied to the CNMV for a license to sell an “active and flexible” fund of funds with assets invested predominantly in equities. The CS Global Fondos Gestión Activa will invest 30% to 75% of its assets in equities funds, and will not be allowed to acquire shares in bond assets rated below BB- by S&P, Funds People reports. Maximal exposure to currency risks will by 30%, and the management team will be able to invest up to 10% in alternative assets (hedge funds, real estate, etc). Management fees will be 1.5%.
06/07/2009

City fears loss of its allure

An increase in taxes on incomes over EUR175,000 per year from 40% to 50% in April 2010 will affect only 1% of British taxpayers, La Tribune reports. But City financial sector employees will be the first to be affected. The newspaper cites David Butler, founder of Kinetic Partners, who estimates that 25% of hedge fund managers in the United Kingdom may leave for other countries as a result of the change. Those who earn over EUR116,000 will lose a small tax deduction previously available to all taxpayers. The tax increase, announced two months ago, La Tribune reports, is one of a series of changes to UK policies to high net worth persons who have been resident in the country for two years or more. One of the great attractions of the City had long been “non-domiciled” tax status. For those with this status, only income earned in the United Kingdom was taxable there, and not income earned elsewhere. Gordon Brown’s government changed this disposition in 2008. Now, “non-doms” choose either to pay a fixed sum of EUR35,000, or to pay tax on all their income. Despite these less favourable conditions, few financial sector workers have chosen to move to other countries, the newspaper observes. And even with the added consequences of the hedge fund directive - which is far from being passed by the British government - for the moment, London remains a top location for managers.
06/07/2009

Union Investment invests in Krakow

The four-star hotel Radisson Blu (16,892 square metres, 196 rooms and suites) in Cracow has been sold for about EUR32m to Union Investment Real Estate (UIRE) for the open-ended real estate fund UniImmo: Europa. This is UIRE’s first investment in the hotel sector in central Europe. The hotel portfolio includes 21 locations in Europe, with a total of 6,350 rooms. The Krakow hotel is also UIRE’s second investment in Poland, following the acquisition of the 3 Stawy shopping centre in Katowice by the UniImmo: Global fund in October.
06/07/2009

Northern Rock sale plans confront difficult climate

La Tribune reports that Northern Rock, the British bank nationalised last year, will be split into two entities: one which will include branches and current accounts, and one which will contain loans and toxic assets, in preparation for a sale of the healthy portion of the group. Downing Street’s effort to sell the nationalised bank have been controversial. The current economic situation renders these efforts more vexed. On the one hand, the bank is being encouraged to refund the government aid it has received as soon as possible, but it is also being encouraged to increase lending to households in order to restart the ecnomy. The government must also be flexible with those financial firms which are not able to repay their debts. The result is that the bank’s capital reserves have fallen below the minimum level, and the government may be required to reach into its pockets once again.
03/07/2009

BNY Mellon AS wins two mandates

BNY Mellon Asset Servicing has announced that it has been awarded mandates for custody, accounting and administration of mutual funds from Cullen Funds Trust, and the administrion of hedge funds from Schafer Cullen. Assets managed by these funds represent about USD500m.
03/07/2009

FRR withdraws a mandate from Robeco Institutional AM

The French national pension fund, the Fonds de réserve pour les retraites (FRR), on Thursday announced that it has withdrawn a mandate from Robeco Institutional Asset Management, awarded in November 2005 for a duration of four years, which covered a portfolio of government bonds and credit denominated in Euros (EUR1.475bn as of 29 May). The withdrawal of the mandate is said to be the result of “continued unsatisfactory financial performance” compared with objectives and the benchmark.
03/07/2009

Parisian market actors sign SRI charter

The French association of asset managers (AFG), the French association of institutional investors (AF2I), the French federation of insurance companies (FFSA), the French bankign federation (FBF) and Paris Europlace on Thursday evening signed a responsible investment (SRI) charter at the Paris Europlace financial sector conference. Representatives of institutional investors, asset management firms and banking and financial businesses pledged to follow three major principles: develop SRI; develop extra-financial information about businesses, and to favour dialogue between issuers and investors; and to favour long-term financing.
03/07/2009

Arrow Hedge confie un mandat à RBC Dexia

RBC Dexia Investor Services annonce avoir été sélectrionné comme prestataire de services de relations avec les actionnaires par le gestionnaire alternatif Arrow Hedge Partners pour une gamme de single hedge funds et de fonds de hedge funds au Canada.
03/07/2009

Reinet se renforce dans le private equity

Selon L’Agefi suisse, la société d’investissement Reinet Investments SCA, qui est basée et cotée à Luxembourg, a acquis en avril dernier, à travers son fonds fermé Reinet Fund SCA FIS, les affaires de merchant banking de Lehman Brothers Holdings à New York et Londres. Reinet, qui résulte d’un spin-off de Compagnie Financière Richemont, a ainsi gagné l’accès à une équipe expérimentée de gérants d’actifs dans le private equity pour un montant modeste.
03/07/2009

Lupus alpha launches an absolute return fund

The independent management firm Lupus alpha has announced the launch on 2 June of the absolute return fund Lupus alpha LS Duration Corporates Invest, its second bond product. The fund, which complies with UCITS III, combines a long/short concept for the duration of the investments with a passive corporate bond investment strategy. The goal is to take advantage of the potential performance of corporate bonds while protecting investors against interest rate risks. The active management of investments for their duration (-6/+6 years) makes it possible to generate performance even when the bond market is falling, says Ralf Lochmüller, chairman of the partners’ committee at Lupus alpha. The goal in the mid-term is to outperform the Euribor 6 month by 250 basis points, with volatility of 5%. The fund is managed by Egbert Sauer, a partner at Lupus alpha and director of bond management. The new fund has been created in cooperation with State Street Global Advisors, who are in charge of the passive replication of more than 1,000 investment grade corporate bonds of the iBoxx € Corporates index. Lupus alpoha states that it already manages nearly EUR1bn in duration strategies, of which nearly EUR250m are for the new strategy, using corporate bonds as an underlying. Characteristics: Name Lupus alpha LS Duration Corporates Invest ISIN Code DE000A0RDTA6 Initial value of shares EUR100 Front-end fee 4% maximum Management fee 0.75% Performance commission 15% on performance exceeding the Euribor 6-month +250bp with high watermark Withdrawal penalty 1% except on the 15th and the last day of each month
03/07/2009

Funds die like flies

Professionals expect that as much as one fifth of the total 6,276 funds (at end-2008) registered for sale in Germany will be shut down, and that even ETFs will suffer, Die Welt reports. Over the first four months of this year, 131 funds have disappeared and experts reckon that the all-time high of 2003 (347 closures or mergers) will be matched. As far as the twelve bigger fund companies are concerned, half of their 3,500 funds show AUM under EUR50m. Universal Investment shows the biggest proportion of dwarf-funds (see table) but this company actually established a platform for smaller wealth managers, which means that the break-even point should be considerably lower than EUR50m. Fund management company AUR in Germany EUR millions Number of funds Number of funds < EUR50m Total DWS/db x-trackers 127.452 463 948 Deka 102.417 161 384 Union Investment 77.604 34 164 Allianz Global Investors 73.645 287 596 Barclays Global Investors 17.913 44 81 Oppenheim Group 9.910 144 204 Pioneer 9.539 115 364 Universal Investment 9.063 170 205 Franklin Templeton 8.591 25 69 Fidelity 7.075 37 229 Frankfurt Trust 6.526 82 97 UBS Group 4.249 18 145
03/07/2009

GAM applies for single hedge fund distributor status

Nora O’Mahony, head of product development at GAM, has told Citywire that the manager has obtained clarification from HMRC (the British tax authorities) about the tax status of leveraged derivatives in offshore funds. As a result, GAM will seek to benefit from the preferential tax status of a “fund distributor,” which will apply to the Global Macro Hedge and GAM Delphic funds, as well as to some of its externally-managed hedge funds.
03/07/2009

Threadneedle recruits an IMF economist

Agnès Belaisch, who for the past ten years has been a senior economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where she was responsible for monitoring emerging economies and advising several governments in Latin America and Asia, is joining the emerging markets debt team at Threadneedle as an emerging market strategist.
03/07/2009

Ignis takes over funds outsourced to Maia

In a statement entitled «Important news about Maia Capital Partners», Ignis Asset Management has announced that it has agreed with Maia Capital Partners to end their joint activities. Multi-managed funds with growth, balanced and cautious profiles will now be managed internally by Ignis. Simon Mungall, partner at Maia Capital, will join Ignis. Ignis, for its part, is considering the recruitment of Vincent Ropers, another partner at Maia Capital, while Chris Ralph and Jason Collins, the other two partners at Maia, are leaving the firm effective immediately.
03/07/2009

UBS WM closes Brighton office

MoneyMarketing reoprts that UBS Wealth Management has closed its Brighton office, following the departure of two investment managers, and transferred its clients to the London branch.
03/07/2009

Alan Porter promoted at Martin Currie

Martin Currie has promoted Alan Porter to co-manager of its retail fund Martin Currie Global (GBP35m) and Martin Currie Global Alpha (GBP23m), effective from 1 July. Porter joined Martin Currie in September 2008, as a senior member of the global equities team. Martin Currie is a management firm specialised in the active management of equities, based in Edinburgh (GBP9.2bn).
03/07/2009

Hewitt purchases BodeHewitt

Hewitt Associates has purchased from HypoVereinsbank the remaining 73 % of pensions consultant BodeHewitt it didn’t own for an undisclosed sum. The company will be merged with Hewitt Germany.
03/07/2009

Fitch lowers rating for Sal. Oppenheim

Fitch Ratings has lowered its long-term rating of the Sal. Oppenheim bank from A to A-, and has placed the rating under negative watch, in case the firm does not succeed in reducing its risks and increasing its capital, Handelsblatt reports. The ratings agency predicts that the firm will increase its capital in second half, which the firm declined to confirm on Thursday. According to reports in Handelsblatt, the rating was originally slated to be reduced even further, which would have provoked the intervention of BaFin representatives and government actors. Fitch says the lowered rating is the result of the deteriorating financial and profit situation at the business. Market turbulence has revealed the weakness of risk management; in addition, transparency about outsourcing of some participations and divisions is less than ideal.
03/07/2009

Gottex wins a mandate from Nestlé

The manager of the fund of hedge funds Gottex, based in Lausanne, has won a major mandate from Nestlé Capital Advisers, the firm in charge of the management of the pension fund for the global food industry giant Nestlé, Le Temps reports. The mandate covers funds of hedge funds following two strategies: event driven and relative value.
03/07/2009

Harcourt launches a recovery fund

The Swiss alternative management firm Harcourt Investment Consulting AG (Harcourt, USD4bn in assets) has announced the launch on 1 July of the diversified fund of hedge funds Belmont (Lux) Recovery, which will specialise in distressed credit. The objective is to provice stabel annual outperformance 800 basis points above the Libor after fees, with a Sharpe ratio of about 1.4. The Belmont Recovery will be invested in 15 to 20 funds.
03/07/2009

Inverco launches a platform to promote funds

Ángel Martínez Aldama, CEO of the Spanish Inverco association of management firm, is in charge of the Obervatorio Inverco project, a platform which will aim to serve retail investors in the collective investment, investment funds, and pension fund sectors. The program will include information days and training courses for small investors as well as added-value information (conjuncture and market notes), along with an active participation in the investment forums. There is a website for the initiative at http://www.observatorioinverco.es/.

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