Invesco Real Estate is continuing its shopping spree in French real estate. The Invesco affiliate has acquired an office property with 4,900 square metres, located in the 4th district of Paris in the boulevard des Capuchines, at the heart of Paris, from Crédit Foncier, for one of its funds. The sale price has not been disclosed. In the past 12 months, Invesco Real has invesed nearly EUR850m in Europe, including more than EUR115m in the French makret alone. As of the end of September, real estate assets under management worldwide, directly or via REIT publicly-traded securities funds, total EUR40bn, of which EUR5bn are in Europe.
For an undisclosed amount, Affiliated Managers Group (AMG, USD513bn as of 30 September) has acquired a majority stake in SouthernSun Asset Management (USD5bn), a boutique specialised in US small and midcap strategies.AMG on 19 December announced that it is acquiring the stakes from external shareholders in SouthernSun, while partners in the firm will retain “a substantial stake in the capital” and will continue to direct the day to day business after the transaction is completed.Senior professionals at SouthernStar have agreed to remain for the long term at the business and funds from SouthernStar will be added to the AMG mutual fund platform.
The hedge fund firm BlueCrest Capital Management, which had stood out favourably in the period following the crisis, has had a difficult year in 2013, the Wall Street Journal relates. The quantitative fund BlueTrend, led by Leda Braga, one of the highest-paid women in the hedge fund sector, has lost about 10% since the beginning of the year. The BlueCrest Capital International, managed by Michael Pratt, one of the founders of the firm, is flat for the year. Instead of withdrawing, BlueCrest borrowed money to buy back the stake in the firm held by its rival Man Group and to recruit to cover new areas such as equities. In New York the firm is moving into larger offices. But some investors are beginning to lose patience, and the inflows of new capital are slowing.
The alternative investment specialist Altegris has appointed Jack L. Rivkin as chief investment officer.Rivkin will head up the division dedicated to research and investment, and will join the investment committee at Altegris. He will also be responsible for the selection of managers and monitoring of allocation and research for Altegris products.Before joining Altegris, Rivkin had been executive adviser fro Aquiline Capital Partners, which partly controls the Altegris group. Rivkin has also worked at Neuberger Berman, Citigroup Investments and PaineWebber.Assets under management at Altegris total USD2.68bn as of the end of September 2013.
Montagu Private Equity, a private equity firm, has announced that it has signed an agreement with UBS to acquire its Corporate Employee Financial Services International (CEFS) operation. The department in question is part of UBS Wealth Management, and administers and manages employee shareholder plans for nearly 100 client businesses in Europe and Asia. Via its client base, CEFS administers plans for more than 780,000 people. The sale is expected to be finalised in 2014, pending regulatory approval. The terms of the contract have not been disclosed.
Andreas Feller, head of investment consulting Switzerland since April, has been promoted to global head of investment consulting & services at Julius Baer, where he began in January 2010.He takes over as head of the new investment consulting & services (ICS) unit, which was created to provide information on products and investment opportunities to “self-directed” clients who would like to decide by themselves how to manage their portfolio.Meanwhile, ICS will aim to unify the provision of services at the group, while previously Julius Baer had three units for this operation, one in Switzerland, one in Asia, and one for the United Kingdom.
Due to an accounting error by M&G, tens of millions of investors will lose 13% of their payments this month, the Telegraph has learned. The asset management firm has sent a letter to 32,000 investors, informing them of the problem, which affects the High Yield Corporate Bond fund. The letter, sent to clients and read by the Telegraph, explains: “I regret to inform you that there has been an accounting error with the M&G High Yield Corporate Bond Fund. A tax which should have been deducted from distributions in August and November have been deducted from that of December.”
After announcing to the Securities and Exchange Commission on 9 Deemebr that it had acquired a 10.14% stake in Telecom Italia, and then on 16 December having corrected the figure to 9.97%, BlackRock has made further acquisitions, by dint of which it has passed 10%, for a total of 10.12% (according to the measurements of the SEC and not the Italian regulator Consob), Il Sole – 24 Ore reports. The asset management firm on Wednesday stated that it was not bound to disclose the possession to the SEC on 16 December, and that it will be bound to indicate any stakes that may exceed 10%, if confirmed, by the end of the year.
State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) has awarded the position of head of the institutional activity in Italy to Antonio Iaquinta. He will work in Milan and will report to the managing director, Danilo Verdacanna. Iaquinta, who joined SSgA in 2008, previously worked at Barclays Global Investors.
The German real estate fund management firm KanAm said that since the announcement on 29 February 2012 that it is liquidating the grundinvest fund, it has sold off assets totalling EUR1.9bn, and paid off EUR800m in credits. The fund has also redeemed a total of EUR366m to its investors tax free, equivalent to EUR5.10 per share.Currently, assets in the fund still total EUR3.4bn, compared with EUR6.3bn 22 months ago (see Newsmanagers of 1 March 2012).
The “first socio-ecological bank in Germany,” GLS Bank, founded in 1974, has announced the launch of its first investment fund, an “equitable” investment product, the GLS Bank Aktienfonds. The composition of the portfolio is subject to tested and strict criteria concerning sustainability and transparency, and investments in commodities or speculation on currencies are totally forbidden.Thomas Goldfuß, director of the wealth management unit at GLS, has announced that investments will concentrate on the long term, particularly in energy, mobility, social, housing, food and training.GLS Bank has seeded the fund with a payment of EUR5m.CharacteristicsName: GLS Bank AktienfondsISIN Code: DE000A1W2CK8 (retail shares)DE000A1W2CL6 (institutional shares, from EUR200,000)Front-end fee: 1%Management commission:1.7% (retail shares)1.05% (institutional shares)
It is not yet official, but very soon Teresa Casla Uriarte will replace Fermin Alvarez as CEO of Fonditel, the asset management firm 70% controlled by Telefónica, Expansión reports. She is currently project director in the finance and business development department at the telephone operator.Alvarez had been in the position since 2010; he has improved the situation and brought returns back into positive territory.Fonditel is the eighth-largest asset management firm for retirement savings plans in Spain, with assets of EUR3.639bn, 34,300 members and 14,025 beneficiaries. The UGT and CCOO unions each own 15% of shares in Fonditel.
Fund houses in China dedicate considerable resources to ensure all their funds stay active, despite some funds possibly generating losses for an extended period. As a result, no open-end mutual fund has ever been terminated in the 15-year history of Chinese retail funds, according to a report on «zombiefunds» released by Cerulli Associates. So, there is a proliferation of funds with small asset sizes in China. The total fund count in China reached 1,372 as at end-September this year. AUM has only grown 13.8% since end-2010, though more than 716 funds have been launched since then. This has pushed the average size of a Chinese mutual fund down from RMB3.7 billion as at end-2010 to RMB2.0 billion as of the third quarter of 2013."Typically, zombiefunds have consistently underperformed, had once taken the spotlight but saw low demand afterward, or were launched by lower-tier fund houses,» says Evonne Gan, an analyst at Cerulli Associates.The proportion of zombiefunds jumped significantly from end-2012 to the third quarter of 2013. Qualified Domestic Institutional Investor (QDII) funds are prominent among them. Half of the 74 QDII funds in the market have less than RMB100 million in assets and almost a quarter of them are below RMB50 million, but remain alive.
The Greek privatisation fund, Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund, is courting US hedge funds to attract investment to finance the recovery in the country, news agency Bloomberg reports.The heads of the fund, who need to raise EUR11bn by 2016 via a public sale of assets, met with the hedge fund manager John Paulson a few days ago. Paulson & Co, as well as other funds, such as Third Point, have expressed an interest in the assets.The planned privatisations, if successful, would add 2.5 percentage points to the GDP by 2016 to create 150,000 jobs, according to estimates by the Greek finance ministry.
Quatre nouveaux membres du collège de l’AMF, organe décisionnel de l’institution, viennent d’être désignés par les différentes autorités compétentes. Le collège, organe décisionnel de l’AMF, est composé de 16 membres. Sur les six membres sortants en décembre 2013, trois étaient en fin de second mandat tandis que les trois autres pouvaient demander la reconduction de leur mandat pour 5 ans. Par arrêté publié au journal officiel du 20 décembre 2013, le ministre de l’Economie a ainsi désigné deux membres, après consultation des organisations représentatives de la Place: Marie-Ange Debon, dont le mandat a été renouvelé, et Jean-Claude Hanus en remplacement d’Olivier Poupart-Lafarge. Le vice-président du Conseil d’Etat, le 1er président de la Cour de cassation et le 1er président de la Cour des comptes ont nommé respectivement Jean-Claude Hassan, (en remplacement de Jacques Delmas-Marsalet), Martine Ract-Madoux (renouvellement) et Michel Camoin, (en remplacement de Philippe Adhémar). Le président de l’Assemblée nationale a nommé Thierry Philipponnat, secrétaire général de Finance Watch, en remplacement de Jean-Michel Naulot.
L’enquête internationale sur une manipulation présumée des taux de change a révélé l’existence d’une connivence entre cambistes visant à maximiser les gains et minimiser les pertes, rapporte vendredi le Wall Street Journal, qui cite des sources proches de l’enquête. Des messages électroniques de forums de discussion «chatrooms» semblent montrer que les cambistes de différentes banques ont partagé des informations concernant les ordres de leurs clients et convenu d'échelonner leurs propres opérations pour en tirer profit, précise le quotidien. L’autorité britannique de surveillance, la Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), a refusé de commenter ces informations.
Standard & Poor’s a confirmé le «AAA» de la Grande-Bretagne, tout en ajoutant qu’elle pourrait priver le pays de cette note suprême si la reprise économique ne durait pas. Moody’s et Fitch ont déjà déclassé la Grande-Bretagne en lui ôtant son «AAA» cette année. La confirmation de la note de S&P est assortie d’une perspective qui reste négative. L’activité économique de la Grande-Bretagne a progressé de 0,8% au troisième trimestre par rapport au trimestre précédent, a confirmé l’Office national de la statistique. En rythme annuel, la croissance est revue à la hausse à 1,9% contre 1,5% estimé auparavant.
La France prévoit d'émettre 173 milliards d’euros d’emprunts à moyen et long terme (MLT) en 2014, nets des rachats, en hausse par rapport aux 169 milliard nets des rachats émis cette année. Il faudra y ajouter 174 milliards d’euros de dette à court terme à refinancer, le programme de l’Agence France Trésor prévoyant une stabilité de l’encours de BTF.
Standard & Poor’s a abaissé la note à long terme de l’Union européenne de AAA à AA+, avec une perspective stable. «A notre avis, les négociations budgétaires de l’UE sont devenues plus tendues, attestant, de notre point de vue, d’une montée des risques concernant le soutien à l’UE de la part de certains Etats membres», explique l’agence dans un communiqué. «Tous les Etats membres ont toujours apporté leur contribution attendue au budget dans les temps et totalement, et ce également pendant la crise financière», a contesté Olli Rehn, commissaire européen aux Affaires économiques et monétaire. L’action de S&P ne concerne l’UE qu’en tant qu'émetteur supranational (56 milliards d’euros de dette émise pour financer des programmes d’assistance) et non pas les Etats qui la composent.
Alors que le fonds de résolution européen doit être financé de manière progressive par les banques en fonction de leur taille, les banques françaises s’attendent pour leur compte à «une facture de 10 à 15 milliards d’euros sur dix ans», selon Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, directeur général de BNP Paribas et président de la FBF, cité par Le Monde.
La société d’investissement entend lever jsuqu'à 3 milliards de dollars pour un fonds alternatif destiné à être investi dans des actifs obligataires, croit savoir Bloomberg. Elle a commencé à sonder l’intérêt des investisseurs pour BlackRock Credit Alpha Fund en octobre, avec un objectif initial de 500 millions de dollars.
Belgrade a confirmé jeudi son intention d’ouvrir des négociations avec le FMI dès début 2014 afin d’obtenir un prêt de précaution. «Un accord de précaution avec le FMI permettrait à la Serbie de mettre en place les réformes prévues et montrerait aux investisseurs étrangers que la Serbie est un marché sûr, stable et attractif», a déclaré dans un communiqué le ministère des Finances.
L'économie irlandaise a enregistré au troisième trimestre une croissance de 1,5% par rapport au trimestre précédent, la reprise semblant ainsi s’accélérer au moment où le pays sort de son programme d’aide internationale. Les économistes interrogés par Reuters avaient anticipé un produit intérieur brut (PIB) de 0,7% pour la période, niveau de croissance qui correspond à celle du deuxième trimestre.
La Commission européenne devrait se prononcer au premier trimestre 2014 sur les nouveaux tarifs français de l'énergie éolienne, ce qui pourrait permettre au secteur d'éviter un vide juridique. La Cour de Justice de l’Union européenne (CJUE) a estimé jeudi que l’arrêté sur le tarif bonifié de rachat de l'énergie éolienne de 2008 n’avait pas été correctement notifié comme aide d’Etat auprès de l’UE.
L’Insee prévoit un rebond temporaire de la croissance du PIB français à +0,4% au dernier trimestre de cette année. L’activité devrait ensuite croître à un rythme plus modéré de +0,2% au premier et deuxième trimestres 2014, ce qui garantirait néanmoins un acquis de croissance de 0,7% à fin juin prochain.