In 2009, Crédit Agricole Asset Management tops the rankings of management firms by Amadeis, followed by Société Générale Asset Management, with which it will soon be merging. The eighth edition of the rankings is based on a survey conducted in January and February 2009 of 60 French institutional investors and distributors representing more than EUR500bn in assets.The two firms were also at the top of the list in 2008, although at that time SGAM was the leader.This year, the rankings puts affiliates of banking groups in all three top spots, with BNP Paribas in third place. The firm is appreciated for its money market management, while CAAM is top for Euro fixed income. Independent management firms are not absent from the rankings, with four such firms in the rankings by asset class. La Française des Placements is well-liked for its diversified management, Sycomore for Euro zone equities, Carmignac Gestion for international equities, and HDF for alternative management. UFG-Sarasin is in first place for SRI management, and Axa IM finishes first for marketing and sales.In the first months of 2009, investors have shown a strong interest in corporate bonds: three quarters of them are planning to increase their allocations to this area in 2009, Amadeis reports. 45% of respondents are planning to increase their allocation to equities. The crisis has strengthened interest in ETFs for 38% of investors in ETFs, and in responsible investment for 29%.

More than one out of two institutional investors (54%) say they are prepared to reconsider their investments in Luxembourg-registered funds, according to an Amadeis survey of 60 French institutional investors and distributors representing more than EUR500bn in assets. The Madoff scandal has affected funds of this type. Similarly, 50% of investors say they are now wary of alternative management.In addition to the Madoff fraud, the crisis has also affected the behaviour of institutional investors. Although the vast majority of institutional investors (81%) are happy with their relationships with management firms, 19% of investors are now unsatisfied with their providers, compared with 10% in 2008 and 3% in 2007. Poor performance is a leading cause of this dissatisfaction.However, the crisis has strengthened interest in ETFs for 38% of investors and in responsible investment for 29%.

Jamais les Etats-Unis et la zone euro n'ont été aussi vulnérables à ce risque, selon BNP Paribas

Le graphique ci-contre montre l’évolution de la corrélation moyenne glissante entre l’indice MSCI EMU et respectivement des indices de style, sectoriels et thématiques.

Les tableaux ci-contre présentent les meilleures et plus mauvaises performances des fonds sur le marché des fonds actions américaines et le marché des fonds actions françaises au cours du mois de février 2009. Ces performances sont mises en perspective par le calcul de la volatilité et du ratio de Sharpe sur trois ans d’historique ainsi que du rendement depuis un an.

Of the 13 EDHEC hedge fund indexes, only four strategies have posted positive results for February. The best returns, by far, were in dedicated short bias (3.54%) and convertible arbitrage (1.76%). The worst results were in emerging markets (-1.25%) and distressed securities (-1.22%). Since the beginning of the year, convertible arbitrage has performed best, with 6.8% performance, ahead of dedicated short bias, with 6.5%. Only three strategies are in the red, particularly emerging markets, with losses of 2.4%.Since January 2001, the two segments which have posted the strongest annual performance have been emerging markets (9.1%), distressed securities (8.6%), and CTA global (8.3%).

As expected, the CNMV on Wednesday approved plans for Gas Natural to take over Unión Fenosa, Cinco Días reports. The operation will proceed at EUR18.05 per share over 25 days. Payments are guaranteed by bank loans of more than EUR8.24bn from Santander, Barclays, BNP Paribas, ING, Scoiété Générale, RBS, Caja Madrid and La Caixa. The acquisition will also be financed by a capital increase of EUR3.5bn and sales of assets.

According to figures from VDOS Stochastics reported in Expansión, four of the most conservative funds on the market have attracted EUR2bn in subscriptions since the beginning of the year. The money market fund BBVA Dinero Fondtesoro Corto Plazo posted net subscriptions of EUR552m, bringing its total assets to EU2.71bn. Two guaranteed bond products from Invercaixa, Garantía Renta Fija 14 and Garantía Renta Fija 7, attracted EUR548m and EUR491m, while another BBVA fund rivalled the Garantía Renta Fija 7, with EUR491m.

Harvey McGrath, the new president of Prudential, has defended securities lending to hedge funds by insurers, in the wake of Aviva’s announcement that it is planning to discontinue the practice, to avoid short positions on its shares, the Financial Times reports. McGrath says being able to sell stocks short is an important element in the functioning of the markets.

Feri EuroRating Services announced on Wednesday that it is offering ratings of bonus, discount, guaranteed, and index-based certificates. The ratings will be 70% based on qualitative criteria related to the product and 30% on qualitative estimates of the issuer. Feri has 52,000 ratings of certificates in its database. To be eligible for a rating, the certificate must be traded on Scoach (Francfort) or Euwax (Stuttgart), information about the issuer and the price must be available in real time, and the remaining time to the maturity of the certificate must be at least 180 days. In addition, there must be at least 20 products in the peer group.

Royal Bank of Scotland will offer debt denominated in Australian dollars underwritten by the British government, the WSJ reports. The bank is hoping to raise at least AUD500m, or USD330m.

Les Echos reports that the agency which manages British debt has announced that gross issues will total GBP147.9bn in the 2009-2010 fiscal year.

An association entitled Anticor (short for anti-corruption) is challenging the appointment of François Pérol as head of the new firm born of the merger of the French co-operative banks and savings banks, due to ?illegal conflicts of interest,? as Pérol participated in the government’s project to merge the entities to create the new banking entity.CGT has already filed a similar suit against Pérol.

Paddy Bingham is joining Invesco Real Estate as director of pan-European management for direct real estate. In this role, he will be in charge of two non-public pan-European real estate funds, including the OPCI OPC1 (Opportunité Placement Ciloger 1), which invests in the Euro zone.Bingham will be based in London and will work with all transaction and asset management specialists at Invesco Real Estate based in Paris, Madrid, Munich, Prague. Before joining Invesco Real Estate, he served as director of real estate at Henderson Global Investors.

The Financial Times reports that KKR and Permira have recruited advisors to restructure about EUR1.8bn in debt at the firm the jointly control, Lavena, which owns a 88% stake in ProSiebenSat.1. In March, the German group announced that it would be reducing dividends.

David Bloom at HSBC, cited by the Financial Times, says that ?the best refuge currency in our opinion is currently the Norwegian Kroner. It is probably the best currency in the world.? The Norwegian Kroner is one of the few currencies in the world to have outperformed the US dollar since the beginning of the year. It has climbed 3% to NOK6.694. Bloom says the currency can be expected to rise in the next 18 months.

Hedge funds are licking their wounds after their strategy of buying preference shares in Citigroup and selling ordinary shares turned against them, the Wall Street Journal reports. Since 5 March, the price of ordinary shares in Citigroup has tripled, to finish Wednesday at EUR3.08.

Although managers are increasingly optimistic about the macroeconomic environment, they are still not moving their assets from cash to equities, according to the most recent survey from Merrill Lynch-Bank of America. Pessimism about this asset class has increased in the past month, as 41% of respondents say they are expecting to be underweight in equities, compared with 34% in February. Managers are preferring bonds, in which 26% of respondents are overweight. In February, only 7% of respondents favoured bond investments.

Redemptions from funds on sale in Italy seem to be slowing, in a sign that the market is beginning to stabilise, Marcello Messori, chairman of Assogestioni (the Italian association of management professionals), has said at the association’s annual meeting. Redemptions primarily affected mid-sized and large firms, particularly those owned by banking groups, Il Sole - 24 Ore reports.

Rolf Enders, partner at the new firm Sal. Oppenheim Private Equity Partners (Sopep), says that the private equity firm born of the merger of the private equity activities of Sal. Oppenheim with CAM Private Equity and VCM Capital Management has assets of EUR5bn. About 95% of this total is invested in 380 funds from private equity firms worldwide, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. Enders expects assets under management to double through organic growth. This year, Sopep will launch an infrastructure fund and a buyout fund of funds.

The Wall Street Journal reports that it is likely that the yields of money market funds will decline as the recommendations of the Investment Company Institute (ICI) are applied. The ad hoc working group formed in the wake of the Reserve Primary Fund affair recommends increasing liquidity and shortening maturities. Paul Schott Stevens, president & CEO of the ICI, says fund management firms will probably follow the recommendations in advance of any rule-making from the SEC.

DEGI, which was taken over by Aberdeen Property Investors on 28 March 2008, has stated that last year it invested EUR1.7bn. The occupancy rate for properties in the portfolios of its five open-ended funds as of 28 February 2009 ranged from 93.3% for the DEGI Europa fund and 100% for the DEGI Europe Retail, while the one-year performance ranged from 4.4% (compared with 4.7% one year ago) for the DEGI Europa to 5% (compared with 4.5%) for the DEGI Europe Retail.Assets total roughly EUR6bn. The manager says the evolution of prices and returns have now extended the number of markets on which investments may be attractive. Among the markets which have now become affordable are the UK, France, and Germany.

Investment Week has announced that Henderson Global Investors (HGI) is recruiting Mark Skinner, managing director of New Star, as head of retail distribution. He will begin in his new role as soon as HGI completes its acquisition of New Star.

GAM has announced that Jonathan Colchester, who was in charge of a team of six bankers serving ultra high net worth clients at Barclays Private Bank, will join the management firm in London on 22 May as head of private clients, Investment Week reports.

John Clougherty, managing director UK, retail, at Aviva Investors (GBP235bn in assets) will meet French colleagues this week to prepare the launch of a European equities fund on the British market, Investment Week reports. It is not certain that the fund will replicate a Luxembourg Sicav. Clougherty says that institutional investors represent a potential market for recovery real estate funds, and that such a product could then be made available to retail investors, once the press has given a better image to real estate investments.

Hedge Fund Research has announced the launch of 38 new HFRX indexes, which constitute a major extension of its range of strategy, region and country sub-indexes. The new offerings bring the total number of products available from HFRX to 65. HFR says the methodology complies with the UCITS III directive. The indexes are designed to be investible, and the funds used are selected from 7,500 products in the HFR database.The new indexes are the HFRX Energy/Basic Materials Index, HFRX Fundamental Growth Index, HFRX Fundamental Value Index, HFRX Quantitative Directional Index, HFRX Short Bias Index, HFRX Technology/Healthcare Index, HFRX EH: Multi-Strategy Index, HFRX Activist Index, HFRX Credit Arbitrage Index, HFRX Private Issue/Regulation D Index, HFRX Special Situations Index, HFRX ED: Multi-Strategy Index, HFRX Active Trading Index, HFRX Commodity Index, HFRX Currency Index, HFRX Discretionary Thematic Index, HFRX Systematic Diversified Index, HFRX Macro: Multi-Strategy Index, HFRX Fixed Income-Asset Backed Index, HFRX Fixed Income-Corporate Index, HFRX Fixed Income-Sovereign Index, HFRX Yield Alternative Index, HFRX RVA: Multi-Strategy Index, HFRX BRIC Index, HFRX Brazil Index, HFRX Russia Index, HFRX India Index, HFRX China Index, HFRX MENA Index, HFRX Multi-Emerging Markets Index, HFRX Total Emerging Market Index, HFRX Latin America Index, HFRX Multi-Region Index, HFRX North America Index, HFRX Northern Europe Index, HFRX Russia/Eastern Europe Index, HFRX Western/Pan Europe Index and HFRX Aggregate Index.

Ravi Mehra, the founder of Vega Asset Management, and Jesús Saá Requejo, are working together to launch the Sapphire Global Fund, a fund that complies with European legislation, which will be closed for three years, and which will invest primarily in global macro funds whose promoters are currently distressed due to lack of liquidity, Hedge Week reports. The fund will use no leverage.

Petercam Institutional Asset Management is launching a European corporate bond fund with a set maturity date, Petercam L Bonds EUR Corporate 06/2014. The sub-fund of the firm’s UCITS III-compliant Luxembourg Sicav will invest in investment grade corporate bonds denominated in Euros, which will mature at dates close to June 2014.The subscription period for the fund will begin on 23 March.

For 2008, Frankfurt Trust posted net subscriptions of EUR1.5bn, of which EUR1.2bn went to open-ended funds. The management firm from BHF-Bank (Sal. Oppenheim group) had assets at the end of the year of EUR16bn, of which EUR9.6bn were in institutional fund management mandates, and EUR6.3bn in open-ended funds, compared with EUR17.7bn, of which EUR10.4bn were in Spezialfonds and institutional mandates, and EUR7.3bn in open-ended funds, the previous year. In net subscriptions to open-ended funds in 2008, Frankfurt Trust posted EUR0.5bn in inflows to money market funds and EUR802.3m for equities funds, while bond funds posted net redemptions of EUR133m. Net inflows to institutional funds totalled EUR381.8m.In January-February, net subscriptions totalled EUR250m for open-ended funds, of which EUR200m were for the FT Accugeld money market fund.As of 28 February, total assets at Frankfurt Trust came to EUR15.6bn, of which EUR9.5bn were in institutional funds and EUR6.1bn in retail funds.

In 2009, Groupama Asset Management is aiming for EUR5bn in net subscriptions, of which it is hoping that EUR3.7bn will come from outside the group. The firm appears to have made a good start to meeting this objective, as it has already registered inflows of EUR2.9bn since the beginning of the year.These inflows come after net inflows of EUR5.3bn in 2008, ?the strongest inflows in the history of the group,? says Francis Ailhaud, CEO of Groupama AM. Due to the falling markets, the management firm nonetheless posted a 7.5% decrease in assets under management, to EUR81.3bn. Due to falling net banking proceeds and rising costs, the firm posted net profits down 49% to EUR15.3m.EUR2.8bn in inflows in 2008 came from clients outside the Groupama group; EUR625m came from calls for offers. These include institutionals and distributors, and now represent EUR14.8bn, or 20% of total assets.This dynamic has been helped by the international growth of Groupama AM. The French management firm has posted net subscriptions of EUR443m abroad, largely in Italy, where it opened an affiliate in 2006. The firm also opened a branch in Spain last year, and signed a distribution agreement in Canada in 2007 (with Investeam).The international deployment will continue in 2009. ?We will develop in two areas,? explains Jean-Marie Catala, director of development at Groupama AM. ?On the one hand, we will assist in the international growth of the group. On the other hand, we will develop autonomously when we identify growth areas,? he says. The firm is planning to set up in Switzerland, and is studying the Middle East, where it may eventually establish operations by the end of the year.In terms of product range, Groupama AM is planning to launch new ?alpha? funds in equities, fixed income, and foreign currencies, as well as in conviction-based management.