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13/03/2009

Europe - Les fonds européens collectent en janvier

Les fonds européens ont pour le troisième mois consécutif, en janvier, enregistré des souscriptions nettes, à hauteur de 22 milliards d’euros, selon Lipper FMI. Il s’agit du meilleur score en 14 mois.A première vue, ces chiffres semblent marquer une embellie. Mais en réalité, l’activité n’a été soutenue que par les investissements saisonniers dans des fonds monétaires français et par les ETF, observe Lipper. Ainsi sans les apports des fonds monétaires français (25 milliards d’euros), le secteur des fonds européens aurait terminé dans le rouge. De même, si l’on omet les ETF, les fonds actions auraient accusé des rachats de 4 milliards d’euros. Ils enregistrent sur le mois une collecte nette de 2 milliards d’euros. La vraie bonne nouvelle de janvier, pour Lipper, c’est que les retraits ont ralenti, et particulièrement dans les obligations, qui ont enregistré leur premier mois de collecte sur plus d’un an. La société ayant enregistré les plus fortes souscriptions est Barclays, avec 3,5 milliards d’euros. Sur les actions, hors ETF, c’est M&G qui se distingue avec +390 millions d’euros.
13/03/2009

France - Dette : les sociétés du CAC 40 ont levé un montant record

Selon Les Echos citant Thomson Reuters, les sociétés du Cac 40 ont déjà levé 29 milliards d’euros de dette depuis le début de l"année. La part des banques s’est fortement réduite. Les entreprises non financières du CAC 40 ont émis un total de 21 milliards d’euros.
13/03/2009

Europe - Le taux des dépôts, "vrai-faux" taux directeur de la BCE.

Selon La Tribune, ce n’est pas le Refi qui constitue le principal levier de la BCE pour secourir le secteur bancaire et dégeler les marchés interbancaires mais le taux des dépôts qui est devenu le vrai-faux taux directeur de la BCE. " Le loyer de l’argent dans la zone euro se retrouve ainsi à des niveaux analogues, voire meilleur marché, que dans les pays où les banques centrales ont ramené leur taux directeur à un niveau voisin de zéro (?)», commente notamment le quotidien en citant notamment l’Euribor 3 mois, moins cher en Europe qu’aux USA ou au RU.
13/03/2009

Sweden - East Capital launches a fund of undervalued assets

The Swedish management firm East Capital, specialised in the markets of Eastern Europe, is launching a fund of undervalued assets. The product, entitled East Capital Special Opportunities Fund, will invest in solid companies with weak valuations for reasons related to the market or the situations of various shareholders. The investment universe covered includes Russia and Eastern Europe.?Investments will be made as a first priority in shares in publicly traded companies, or in shares which may be traded. They may also include other financial instruments. East Capital will retain investments which have both clear potential for appreciation and an opportunity to exit within four years,? says a press statement.East CapitaL Explorer AB will invest EUR35m in the fund, which is slated for launch in second quarter 2009.The product is aimed at institutional investors and other qualified investors, and is limited to USD100m in size. The duration of the fund will be four years.
13/03/2009

World - Hedge funds: Liquidity comes at a price

Do managers of more liquid hedge funds tend to deliver less alpha than illiquid managers? This is the question Olympia asks in a new study. The answer is affirmative: ?investors may well pay the price of lower alpha to obtain higher liquidity, particularly for strategies that use illiquid financial instruments.?The study, led by Ivan Guidotti, also finds that ?investing in young funds should not be considered a panacea by managers of funds of hedge funds seeking talented and liquid hedge fund managers.? Although the study confirms that young funds tend to outperform older funds, the best young funds are still the ones which are least liquid.
13/03/2009

France - Governance of funds returns to the foreground

Due to the financial crisis and the mounting number of scandals in the investment industry, ?the theme of governance of funds is becoming an important current issue again,? said Aymeric Poizot, an analyst at Fitch Ratings, at the ratings agency’s annual conference, held on Tuesday. In France, compared with other European countries, the rules and principles of governance applied to management firms are ?relatively flexible, particularly in relation to supervision of the company by executive management,? Fitch Ratings found in a study published last December. ?The board of directors is not required to include independent members, nor to create auditing committees to consider pay scales.? The same thing is true on the level of OPCVM funds. The most common legal structure is FCP funds (90% of French OPCVMs), which are not supervised by a board of directors, unlike Sicav funds.Fitch also notes in its study that ?French regulations do not require independent evaluation, since the management firm remains reponsible for the valuation of assets, contrary to the case in other European countries.?
13/03/2009

Luxembourg - Nordea contracts management of Far Eastern Value Fund to TMAI

The management of the Far Eastern Value Fund BP-USD, a sub-fund of the Luxembourg Sicav Nordea-1, which had USD102m in assets as of the end of January, has been transferred to TMAI, who will manage the fund from Tokyo. Nordea was seeking a manager for the fund who who could provide a combination of top-down analysis and bottom-up stock-picking, rather than a specialist in a given management style.
13/03/2009

United States - Oppenheimer recruits a VP from Deutsche Bank

Oppenheimer Funds Inc (OFI) has announced the recruitment of Krishna Memani as senior vice president, head of the high grade fixed income team. Memani was previously managing director, head of the US & Euroopean credit analyst team at Deutsche Bank. At Oppenheimer, he will be responsible for management of high grade bond portfolios, including the Oppenheimer Core Bond Fund, the U.S. Government Trust Fund, and the Oppenheimer Limited-Term Government Fund, as well as mandates.
13/03/2009

United Kingdom - SLI presents balanced books for 2008

After GBP90m in restructuring charges related to the Global Liquidity Funds sub-fund, Standard Life Investments (SLI) has posted pre-tax results for 2008 that put it just even, compared with profits of GBP100m in 2007. Total assets declined by 14%, to GBP123.8bn as of the end of December, compared with GBP143.4bn twelve months earlier, while assets under management for third parties are down 5% to GBP45.5bn. EBIT rose 9% to GBP82m.Net subscriptions from third parties fell 57% to GBP3.39bn. Excluding highly volatile flows of assets related to money market funds, net inflows from third parties totalled GBP4.74bn, compared with GBP6.85bn. Retail sales were relatively stable over the year, while new money came primarily from institutional investors.
13/03/2009

United Kingdom - Redemptions suspended at Weavering

Weavering Macro Fixed Income, the flagship fund from Weavering Capital, a London-based hedge fund management firm, has frozen redemptions after an internal investigation found swaps for a significant sum with a firm related to the fund manager, the Financial Times reports.
13/03/2009

United States - Bill Gross (Pimco) returns to Treasuries

Bill Gross has announced that he has increased the allocation to Treasuries in the portfolio of the Total Return Fund from Pimco (Allianz group), putting it at its highest level since July 2007, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. Gross, who was also long on MBS, moved to a negative position on Treasuries in January.
13/03/2009

Spain - Managers look to outsource fund administration

To save more on costs which are not directly related to management, Spanish management firms are seeking to outsource their back-office activities, while, according to Expansión, actors such as BNP Paribas, Santander, Socgen (Société Générale), Bancoval (RBC Dexia) and Accenture are experiencing an increased number of inquiries from potential outsourcing clients. Management firms interested in these services include some of the top 20 firms in Spain, and particularly mid-sized banks, as well as foreign management firms. Outsourcing administration activities may bring savings of up to 30% on fixed costs. Among the larger actors in management, only Bankinter has outsourced its fund administration, to Accenture.
13/03/2009

Germany - Allianz to invest EUR10bn in real estate

Stefan Brendgen, the new CEO of Allianz Real Estate Deutschland GmbH, announced at the MIPIM conference in Cannes that the German insurance firm is planning to invest about EUR10bn worldwide in real estate in the next five years, Handelsblatt reports. The investments will be financed entirely with the group’s own equity. The objective will be to increase the proportion of the portfolio allocated to real estate by half, from a level of 4% currently, and to diversify assets geographically. Currently, Allianz owns properties valued at EUR17.2bn. The insurer has also decided to ?give some air? to its portfolio, as only active management is likely to provide the target returns of 9% to 10%. To achieve this, Allianz has assembled a team of 450 people worldwide, including nearly 150 personnel in Germany.
13/03/2009

Europe - Downturn in performance for private equity

According to the European ECVA association of private equity investors, the average performance of private equity funds contracted last year by an average of 25%, while the performance of mega-funds fell by 27%, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. The number of funds fell to 128 last year, compared with 144 in 2007, and the average size of funds fell to EUR426m from EUR497m. In total, private equity funds in Europe invested EUR52.4bn last year, compared with EUR72.1bn in 2007.
13/03/2009

Europe - Savings interest rates provide support for ECB interest rate policies

La Tribune reports that the REFI is not the ECB’s most valuable tool to ensure the stability of the banking sector and to ease the bottleneck on the inter-bank lending markets, but rather interest rates on savings accounts, which have become the proving grounds for the ECB’s prime rate. Despite a higher prime rate in the Euro zone, ?the price of borrowing in the Euro zone is at similar or less expensive levels than in countries where central banks have lowered their prime rates to near-zero levels,? the newspaper points out, citing the Euribor 3-month rate, which is lower in Europe than in the USA or the UK.
13/03/2009

United States - BofA will be profitable this year

Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America, announced on Thursday that the bank was profitable in the first two months of 2009, and that he predicts that the bank will earn a profit for the year as a whole, the Financial Times reports.
13/03/2009

Germany - KKR interested in Phoenix

According to reports in Handelsblatt, the private equity investor Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) is ready to lay out EUR3bn to EUR4bn to acquire Phoenix, the pharmaceutical product wholesaler owned by the Merckle group. KKR already controls the medicine and drugstore product distributor Alliance Boots in the United Kingdom. The EUR3-4bn offer price would apply if Phoenix were completely free of debt, but the firm in fact has EUR4bn in debt due to its acquisitions in past years. Nonetheless, the firm is estimated to be healthy on the operational level.
13/03/2009

World - Number of multi-managers expected to decrease

A study by Skandia Investment Group (SIG) has found that in the next two years, the number of multi-managers is expected to fall, but that they will account for a higher percentage of total subscriptions. Jamie McLeod, CEO of SIG, estimates that the asset management sector is contracting due to the economic crisis, while the market share for multi-managers is increasing since investors and their advisors are increasingly seeking to outsource selection and monitoring of managers.According to a recent survey by SIG of 300 advisors, 46% of respondents predict that their sales of multi-managed funds will increase in 2009, while 51% estimate that they will remain at the same levels.Although many management firms set up multi-management operations several years ago in an effort to exploit that growing segment, some may have poorly appreciated the intellectual capital necessary to operate successfully in the multi-management market, and some have already succumbed to commercial pressures which they probably underestimated, says McLeod.
13/03/2009

United Kingdom - Barings launches a fund to combat inflation

Investment Week reports that Barings will launch a multi-asset class non-UCITS retail scheme (NURS) fund on March 23, which will be available only in pounds Sterling, and which will be domiciled in the United Kingdom. The objective of the fund is to generate performance higher than inflation, as measured by the retail price index (RPI) over the long term. The product, aimed at retail investors, may invest up to 60% of its assets in equities, and will belong to the IMA’s ?cautious managed funds? category. The manager, Andrew Cole, predicts that 75% of performance will come from strategic or tactical allocations, while the rest will result from active management.Minimal subscription will be GBP2,000. Baring will charge a front-end fee of 5% and a management commission of 1.5%.
13/03/2009

Netherlands - Complete restructuring at ING IM

Jan Straatman, former CEO of Pearl-Axial Investments, who became CIO of ING Investment Management in August 2008, has announced a complete restructuring of the management firm. The company will abandon its ?silo? arrangement by asset class in favour of a multi-boutique system, with teams whose ideas may be deployed over several different strategies, IPE reports. Risk management will be maintained at the strategy level, and will be transversally covered by an independent diagnostic risk team from the hedge fund world. Funds People reports for its part that managers who do not earn positive returns will not earn bonuses, while Global Pensions states that bonuses will be paid out in instalments over two to three years, and withdrawn if managers underperform. Straatman has told Global Pensions that the restructuring will be completed by the end of the year.
13/03/2009

Europe - Inflows to European funds in January

European funds have posted net subscriptions for the third consecutive month in January, totalling EUR22bn, according to Lipper FMI. This is the best result in 14 months.At first glance, these figures seem to mark a turnaround for the market. But in reality, activities have been propped up by seasonal investments in French money market funds and ETFs, Lipper observes.Aside from inflows to French money market funds (EUR25bn), the European fund sector finished the month in the red. Similarly, excluding ETFs, funds would have shown net outflows of EUR4bn. For the month, they show a net inflow of only EUR2bn.The real good news in January, says Lipper, is that redemptions have slowed, particularly in bonds, which posted their first month of net inflows in more than a year.The firm which posted the strongest net inflows was Barclays, with EUR3.5bn. For equities, excluding ETFs, M&G stands out with EUR390m in inflows.
13/03/2009

Germany - SRI gains ground

Despite the financial crisis, many funds managed with an awareness of ecological and social criteria have been placed on the market recently. In the German-speaking countries alone (Germany, Austria, Switzerland), 50 new products were launched in 2008, representing total assets of EUR900m, according to the Sustainable Business Institut (SBI). Handelsblatt reports that some sustainable development fund promoters have posted net subscriptions at a time when net redemptions for asset management in Europe totalled EUR300bn, according to Lipper FMI. However, with market effects taken into account, assets in SRI funds fell by one third, a contraction less severe than the average for German equities funds (-38%).
13/03/2009

Belgium - Fitch places rating of Fortis Investments on ?rating watch evolving?

On Thursday, Fitch Ratings announced that it has placed its asset manager rating of M2 for Fortis Investment Management (FIM) under a ?rating watch evolving,? for all asset management activities excluding alternative investment and structured credit. The ratings watch is due to a lack of details about the ongoing merger process between Banque Fortis and BNP Paribas; in particular, there is a lack of clarity about the possible integration of FIM and BNPP Investment Partners (which is rated M2+).
13/03/2009

Germany - Lawsuits against HRE

Two management firms, Frankfurter Service Kapitalanlage or FSK (an affiliate of BHF-Bank specialised in institutional funds) and the Austrian firm 3Banken Generali Investment, have filed a lawsuit against Hypo Real Estate (HRE), the Munich courts have confirmed to Spiegel Online. The plaintiffs accuse the bank of concealing its poor financial situation on several occasions last year.
13/03/2009

Luxembourg - Reinhard Krafft leaves Sal. Oppenheim

A spokesperson for Sal. Oppenheim has confirmed that Reinhard Krafft left his job as number two in the private banking division in December, and that no successor for him has been appointed, Financial Times Deutschland reports. Krafft has set up as an independent consultant, and is working for the Central Bank of Luxembourg.
13/03/2009

Germany - Wallberg releases a real estate fund of funds

The Wallberg group has announced that it has been granted permission by BaFin to release its Luxembourg-registered real estate fund of funds Wallberg Real Estate, launched on 16 November 2007, in Germany. The fund passed EUR100m in assets in September. At the end of February, it has EUR98.75m in assets, and performance since the launch of the fund totalled 3.72% for the retail segment.Front-end fees and management commission are 5% and 1%, respectively, in addition to which there is an advising commission for the Reuschel bank, and a 20% commission on performance exceeding monthly average returns of the Euribor 1-month.
12/03/2009

Allemagne - Robeco muscle sa force de vente

Robeco Deutschland annonce avoir recruté Doris Galle-Rostami comme senior account manager pour le suivi de la clientele de CGPI, de réseaux de courtiers, de plates-formes et de banques. Elle sera subordonnée à Kai Röhrl, head of third party distribution et quitte Franklin Templeton Investment Services où elle avait responsabilités analogues à celles que lui confie Robeco.

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