Old Mutual Global Investors has appointed Stewart Cowley, who was heading the fixed income team, to the newly created role of investment director, fixed income and macro. Meanwhile, Christine Johnson has been promoted to head of fixed income, reporting to Stewart Cowley.In his new role, Stewart Cowley will be able to focus 100% of his time on managing his existing institutional accounts, GBP927m Old Mutual Global Strategic Bond Fund, USD200m Dublin-based Old Global Strategic Bond Fund, USD42m Old Mutual Global Bond Fund, and GBP102m Old Mutual Managed Fund. He will also develop and market a new macro fund which will be managed by himself and supported by Hinesh Patel. As well as managing her team, Christine Johnson will continue to manage the GBP422m Old Mutual Corporate Bond and GBP40m Monthly Income Bond Funds. She will continue to be supported by Tim Barker, head of credit research, Lloyd Harris, Senior Credit Analyst and Bastian Wagner, assistant portfolio manager.Old Mutual has also recently recruited two persons to boost its capability in the high yield area. Deepa Abraham joined the company in August as a senior credit analyst to work alongside Bastian Wagner. Simon Prior will also join the team as a credit analyst on 14 October from Old Mutual Group. Old Mutual Global Investors will seek to increase the resource in the fixed income team within the global bond area.

On 6 November, Richard Wilson, senior manager, global client propositions at HSBC Global Asset Management since January 2013, will become head of marketing at Jupiter Asset Management.Before joining HSBC GAM, Wilson was Director of Marketing & Distribution Services at Henderson Global Investors (HGI) from April 2009 to October 2012, and Marketing Director at New Star Asset Management from January 2003 to April 2009.

The British bank Lloyd’s is reportedly nearing a sale of Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP), according to Fund Web, relaying rumours reported by the Daily Mail, at a time when the possibiilty of such an operation has been a leading topic for several months. Among the potential buyers are Aberdeen Asset Management, Macquarie and Natixis. The candidates are, however, reported to be reticent about the price being asked (GBP400m to GBP500m).

Investec Asset Management has announced the launch of share classes which comply with RDR regulations in its full range of OEIC funds domiciled in the United Kingdom, Investment Europe reports. The asset management firm is offering shares which charge fees of 0.65% as an annual management charge (AMC).

There is a rising number of planned passports for Asian funds. After the Asia Region Funds Passport (ARFP) proposed 10 days ago (see Newsmanagers), the ASEAN capital markets forum (ACMF) has announced in a statement that the market authority of Malaysia, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Thai market watchdog had signed a memorandum of understanding to create a cross-border range of collective investment schemes (OPC or CIS). In order to be eligible, candidate asset management firms must have at least USD500m in assets under management and must have been active for at least five years. This passport may be introduced during first half 2014, a statement says.

Deutsche Börse will soon announce that it has admitted two new Luxembourg-registered ETFs to trading on the XTF segment of the Xetra electronic trading platform launched by ComStage, an affiliate of Commerzbank. The funds were founded on 30 September. One of them, the ComStage ETF FTSE China A50 UCITS ETF, replicates an index in US dollars of shares in mainland Chinese companies developed by FTSE; the other, the ComStage ETF MSCI World with EM Exposure net UCITS ETF, tracks an index of the 300 companies of the MSCI index most exposed to emerging markets.CharacteristicsName: ComStage ETF FTSE China A50 UCITS ETFISIN code: LU0947415054Total expense ratio: 0.50%Name: ComStage ETF MSCI World with EM Exposure net UCITS ETFISIN code: LU0947416961Total expense ratio: 0.40%

The Frankfurt-based asset management boutique Acatis Investment, whose assets total EUR2.1bn thanks to EUR685m in net subscriptions in the first eight months of 2013 (thus not counting inflows in September) unveiled the largest fund in the litter in Paris on 3 October, which is managed by Universal Investment and “sub-advised” by Gané AG of Aschaffenburg. The German-registered product, Acatis Gané Value Event Fund UI, has EUR785m in assets, and has attracted a net EUR400m since the beginning of the year, says Uwe Rathausky, one of the two founders and directors at Acatis.The portfolio, which now includes 25 positions with a turnover rate of 30%, is invested in equities, bonds and cash. For an investment, the team requires profits of 10% for each equity and 6% for each bond, and historically, the cash allocation has varied from 5% to 40%. The fund is currently 47% invested in equities (including 31% in US large caps), 16% in bonds (rated an average of BBB-), and 37% in cash.To describe the management style, Rathausky explains that he applies a value approach to the business, the management and the valuation, and complements this with an event-driven component, while refusing to use derivatives. The portfolio must have a considerably lower volatility than that of the equity markets, and a beta correlation of 0.30 to 0.60, also with respect to the equity market.CharacteristicsName: Acatis Gané Value Event Fund UIIsin Codes : DE000A0X751: A sharesDE000AIC5D13: B sharesDE000AIT73W9: C sharesBenchmark index: 50 % MSCI World Performance EUR/50 % EoniaFront-end fee:5% maximum (A and C shares)4% maximum (B shares)Management commission: 1.75%Performance commission: 20% of performance exceeding 6% (maximum 2% for the B share class)

The market capitalisation of the telecommunications operator SoftBank on 3 October exceeded that of the banking group Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), to become the second largest on the Tokyo stock exchange, after Toyota. The share price of SoftBank on Thursday rose 4% to JPY7530 (EUR56.96), after significant rises already during recent trading sessions, a level not seen since November 2005. The market capitalisation of SoftBank on Thursday at the end of the day was JPY9.040trn (about EUR68bn), compared with JPY8.725trn for MUFG and more than JPY21.550trn for Toyota.

Finews reports that according to Reuters, Credit Suisse is said to be in the running to acquire the private banking activities of Société Générale in Asia. Ten banks submitted bids, including at least one US company, Credit Suisse, Standard Chartered, DBS and HSBC.The asset is estimated to be worth USD600m, with USD13bn in assets.

Chiow Wei Lee has resigned from his role as chief investment officer at Tokio Marine Asset Management International (TMAI), Citywire Global reports. His resonsibilities have been taken over by the current CEO, Kenji Kodama. Lee will leave his position on 13 November this year. Assets under management at TMAI total about USD3.5bn.

The alternative asset management entity UBS O’Connor (UBS group), whose assets under management total about USD5.2bn, is planning to open its first Asian hedge fund to investors by the end of the year, according to the news agency Bloomberg.The fund, which started the month of August with internal capital, is managed by John Bradshaw and David Perrett from New York.

Investment fund assets worldwide decreased 3.5 percent during the second quarter to stand at EUR 22.94 trillion at end June 2013, according to statistics from the European fund and asset management association (EFAMA). Worldwide net cash inflows amounted to EUR 109 billion, compared to EUR 320 billion in the previous quarter. A sharp reduction in net inflows to equity and bond funds explains this result. Long-term funds (all funds excluding money market funds) continued to register net inflows amounting to EUR 193 billion during the second quarter, albeit down from the record net inflows of EUR 402 billion registered in the previous quarter. Worldwide equity funds attracted EUR 28 billion in net new money during the quarter, while bond funds registered net inflows amounting to EUR 31 billion, down from EUR 143 billion in the previous quarter. Balanced funds recorded reduced net inflows of EUR 57 billion, down from EUR 74 billion in the first quarter. Net outflows from money market funds remained relatively steady at EUR 84 billion during the quarter, compared to EUR 82 billion in the previous quarter. Europe, which registered net outflows of EUR 53 billion during the quarter, accounted for much of these outflows. At the end of the second quarter, assets of equity funds represented 38 percent and bond funds represented 23 percent of all investment fund assets worldwide. The asset share of money market funds was 15 percent and the asset share of balanced/mixed funds was 11 percent.

At a time when emerging markets are experiencing turbulence, inflows to funds dedicated to frontier markets are gaining momentum. The low correlation with developed and emerging markets is one of the reasons for this sustained interest in frontier markets, which, however, suffer from a deficit of liquidity which dampens the ardour of asset managers, Cerulli observes in the October issue of the “Cerulli Edge - Global Edition.” Assets under management in frontier funds remain modest: they are naturally mostly in the millions rather than the billions. But inflows are rising, and creations of funds of funds are increasing. “Global institutional investors are increasingly inclined to dedicate a small percentage of their emerging market allocation to frontier markets, probably not more than 1% to 3%, but that represents a considerable increase compared with the situation five, or even three, years ago,” says Barbara Wall, director at Cerulli Associates. “Inflows appear to be going primarily to markets which offer the best infrastructure and liquidity, and then to the ones which offer low correlation with other asset classes,” says Yoon Ng, associate director at Cerulli. Actively-managed long-only funds dominate the field, but they are now facing rising competition from ETFs, whose assets under management have risen by more than 50% since the beginning of the year.

The Italian asset management froup Azimut Holding and the Singapore-based independent asset management firm Athenaeum have signed an agreement to launch activities in partnership on the local market, according to a statement released on 2 October. If it obtains the required athorisation, Azimut, via AZ International Holdings, will acquire 55% of capital in the asset management firm via a capital increase, which will make it possible to finance the planned partnership. The management team at Athenaeum will remain alongside Azimut to develop Asian activities in the next few years.

According to the most recent statistics from Dealogic, large operations are rising again, boosting global activity since the beginning of the year, Les Echos reports. 18 operations of over USD10bn were announced between January and September 2013, totalling nearly USD550bn. But the global M&A market remains reduced in terms of the number of operations.

Clemens Reuter, head of UBS ETFs, has told Fondsprofessionell that his asset management firm has decided to cut the total expense ratios (TER) for several of its ETFs with effect from 16 September. In order for investors to be aware of the additional costs involved with synthetic replication ETFs, particularly costs related to the swap, UBS ETFs has also decided to publish a parallel “drag level” TER, in order to offer complete transparency. The “drag level” rate will be calculated by UBS once per year, on 31 July, and will apply for the following 12 months.

Following its acquisition of the ETF activities of Credit Suisse, iShares has modified its range of products on offer in the EMEA region (Europe, the Miiddle East and Africa), Investent Europe reports. As part of the changes, iShares will close 15 ETFs from 24 October 2013 for various reasons, particularly a lack of interest on the part of investors in these vehicles. The funds concerned include 89 funds from iShares and 7 funds from Credit Suisse.iShares has also repositioned the capitalisation versions of the iShares FTSE 100 UCITS ETF, iShares S&P 500 UCITS ETF and iShares S&P 500 - B UCITS ETF with a total expense ratio of 15 basis points, in order to meet rising demand from institutional investors for inexpensive and transparent ETFs. The versions of these products placed on sale have not been modified.

Hedge funds and other parallel banking operators are growing on the repurchasing market, as new rules render this activity less attractive for banks, the Financial Times reports. Among other players who are active in this area are Och-Ziff and Moore Capital, the newspaper says.

According to Institutional Investors’ alpha, relaying the New York Times DealBlog, three more managers have left the hedge fund management firm SAC Capital Advisors, which is facing a lawsuit for insider trading. The three specialists, based in London, are Alidod Shirinbekov, Woei Chan and Paul Crouch.

A group of seasoned asset management professionals, Ezra Zask, Ralph DiMeo, Robert Krause, Wendy Robertson and Matthias Knab, who have already done more than 1,000 due diligence reports on hedge funds, have founded the platform Hedge Fund Due Diligence Exchange (HFDDX), which offers members an online marketplace to anonymously reconcile their needs with those of other participants, at http://www.hfddx.com/. When two or more members would like due diligence on the same fund, this reduces the cost proportionately.However, HFDDX does not recommend managers, and does not assist members to find funds which suit their needs.

La Française and Ofi AM on Thursday, 3 October announced that they are merging their incubation activities at NExT AM and NewAlpha AM. The new merged entity will have 49 investments, EUR1.3bn in cumulative seed money commitments, 26 active partners, and a total of EUR6.2bn in assets managed by 260 employees at partner asset management firms.NewAlpha AM is now 40% contorlled by La Française via its affiliate NExT AM, 25% by Ofi AM via NewAlpha Advisers, and 35% by the founders of NewAlpha AM within the entity NewAlpha Partners. NewAlpha AM will become the manager for third parties in the new ensemble, and will take over the management of the NExT Invest fund.The new entity, whose brand name has not yet been decided, aims to become the European leader in asset management incubation, “and one of the top two or three worldwide,” says the chairman of the board of NewAlpha AM, Antoine Rolland.

Amundi would like to increase its assets in socially responsible investment from EUR66bn as of the end of June 2013, to EUR100bn, in two years, Yves Perrier, CEO of the asset management firm of the Crédit Agricole group, announced on Thursday at a press conference. As of 30 June, Amundi had a total of EUR750bn in assets under management. In order to develop its SRI assets, th asset management firm is planning to rely on two vectors. The first is the transformation of traditional funds into SRI funds, as have already been done in money markets (which now represent 37.76% of SRI assets). Pierre Schereck, director of corporate savings and SRI at Amundi, says, for example, that in employee savings, EUR10bn out of EUR20bn are not yet SRI and could be. The other vector is inflows, although Perrier claims that demand for SRI is “marginal,” particularly on the part of retail investors. Three quarters of SRI assets at Amundi are managed for institutional investors. At the conference, Perrier also discussed the choice to certify the firm’s SRI precedures with Afnor Certification, and to drop the Novethic labels. “There were disagreements about the procedure at Novethic, which has more exclusions than ours,” he explains. “The point of friction is the selectiveness rate,” Anne-Catherine Husson Traore, CEO of Novethic, confirms. Perrier also supports the creation of a European, rather than French, SRI label. SRI procedures at Amundi are based on environmental, social and governance analysis of 4,600 issuers. This makes it possible to construct portfolios with a universal best-in-class approach. Extra-financial research has also been made available to all managers, who are, however, not required to use it.

The U.S. institutional market is going to increase 30% to USD19 trillion in assets within the next 5 years, expects Cerulli Associates. As of year-end 2012, the institutional market held USD14.5 trillion in assets under management. «The shift from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) is continuing,» explains John Hsu, senior analyst at Cerulli. «DC markets continue to grow faster than DB markets and we anticipate that trend will continue."Cerulli highlights an opportunity for asset managers who have shifted their focus to DC to leverage existing relationships with corporate DB plan sponsors, allowing them to win DC mandates and potentially extend to custom target-date solutions.

A l’occasion de l’inauguration officielle des nouveaux locaux de BlackRock sur la Bahnhofstrasse à Zurich, Martin Gut, country head pour la Suisse, a indiqué que le gestionnaire américain pourrait bientôt employer sensiblement plus de 100 personnes à Zurich et Genève, contre 80 actuellement, rapporte finews.Ce sera de la croissance organique après que BlackRock ait acheté la multigestion de Swiss Re et l’activité ETF de Credit Suisse, ce qui a permis d’augmenter l’encours à près de 120 milliards de dollars.Par ailleurs, a annoncé Martin Gut, BlackRock est sur le point de créer une société de gestion et d’administration de fonds de droit suisse. Les pourparlers avec la Finma sont prometteurs, a précisé le manager.

Filiale à 100 % de Frankfurter Bankgesellschaft (Suisse), le zurichois LB(Swiss) Investment AG annonce le 3 octobre avoir ajouté au 1er octobre un nouveau pôle à ses activités, la représentation en Suisse des fonds étrangers. Cela vient compléter les activités de création et gestion de fonds ainsi que de conformité et de gestion du risque.En tant que centre de compétence, LB(Swiss) Investment offre à ses clients potentiels son expertise de la législation helvétique en matière de fonds, ce qui permet de développer une stratégie commerciale. De plus, le business model est conçu de manière à exclure les conflits d’intérêt, notamment en évitant toute situation de concurrence entre la société et ses clients, a souligné Marcel Weiss, directeur général.

Banque Raiffeisen a annoncé mercredi 2 octobre une hausse de 1 % des avoirs sous gestion au premier semestre 2013 par rapport au 31 décembre 2012. La progression est de 2,7% par rapport au 30 juin 2012. Au niveau des revenus, la progression du résultat sur intérêts s’établit à 5,2%, en ligne avec la croissance des volumes. Les commissions quant à elles sont en augmentation et reflètent surtout le recours croissant des clients à des solutions de placement alternatives. Les coûts d’exploitation sont en hausse en raison de l’augmentation du nombre d’employés et des frais liés à la mise en production de la nouvelle plateforme informatique, indique un communiqué.

La Deutsche Börse devrait bientôt annoncer l’admission à la négociation sur le segment XTF de sa plate-forme électronique Xetra de deux nouveaux ETF de droit luxembourgeois lancés par ComStage, filiale de la Commerzbank. Ces fonds ont été créés le 30 septembre. L’un, le ComStage ETF FTSE China A50 UCITS ETF réplique un indice en dollars d’actions de sociétés de Chine continentale développé par FTSE ; l’autre, le ComStage ETF MSCI World with EM Exposure net UCITS ETF, suit un indice des 300 sociétés du MSCI les plus exposées aux pays émergents.CaractéristiquesDénomination: ComStage ETF FTSE China A50 UCITS ETFCode Isin: LU0947415054Taux de frais sur encours: 0,50 %Dénomination: ComStage ETF MSCI World with EM Exposure net UCITS ETFCode Isin: LU0947416961Taux de frais sur encours: 0,40 %

BNP Paribas Real Estate vient de nommer Patrick Delcol, directeur général de BNP Paribas Real Estate pour l’Europe Centrale et de l’Est à compter du 1er octobre 2013. Il aura sous sa responsabilité les lignes de métier Transaction, Conseil, Expertise et Property Management, ainsi que le développement de l’organisation en ECE. Le groupe souhaite bénéficier d’une présence de premier plan, comparable à celle qu’il occupe déjà sur les principaux marchés immobiliers d’Europe.Basé en Pologne depuis près de 18 ans, Patrick Delcol a été nommé en 2002 directeur Général chez Centrum Development and Investment (ex-DTC Real Estate), poste qu’il a occupé pendant six ans. Il a ensuite rejoint ING Real Estate en tant que Directeur du développement et Membre du Comité, avant de devenir Responsable pays (Pologne) chez DTZ.

La Française et Ofi AM ont annoncé jeudi 3 octobre la fusion de leur activité d’incubation portée par NExT AM et NewAlpha AM. Le nouvel ensemble compte 49 investissements réalisés, 1,3 milliard d’euros d’engagements cumulés en seed money, 26 partenariats actifs et un total de 6,2 milliards d’euros d’actifs gérés par 260 collaborateurs chez les gérants partenaires. NewAlpha AM est désormais détenu à hauteur de 40% par La Française via sa filiale NExT AM, à 25% par Ofi AM via NewAlpha Advisers et 35% par les créateurs de NewAlpha AM au sein de l’entité NewAlpha Partners. NewAlpha AM deviendra le gestionnaire pour compte de tiers du nouvel ensemble et reprendra la gestion du fonds NExT Invest. La nouvelle entité, dont le nom de marque n’est pas encore décidé, veut devenir leader européen de l’incubation en gestion d’actifs, «et dans les deux ou trois premiers au niveau mondial», a déclaré le président du directoire de New Alpha AM, Antoine Rolland. NewAlpha AM, qui bénéficie d’un statut de société de gestion, sera le point d’entrée centralisé des porteurs de projets. L’équipe sera en charge du sourcing, de l’analyse et des investissements. De son côté NExT AM, outre la promotion des sociétés incubées au travers de son Label d’innovation et de qualité, mettra au service des acteurs du secteur sa capacité à les accompagner dans les opérations de croissance et de restructuration dans le cadre de la consolidation en cours des métiers de la gestion d’actifs. Le nouvel ensemble associe l’approche de NewAlpha AM spécialisée dans l’univers de la gestion alternative à l’international à l’expérience de NExT AM, qui soutient les sociétés d’origines françaises actives dans la gestion d’actifs «long only». Il affiche une stratégie de développement ambitieuse dans ces deux univers d’investissement au travers de sa capacité de sourcing à l’international qui sera notamment mise à profit dans la gestion long only. Le nouvel ensemble offrira aux investisseurs un accès à l’incubation sous plusieurs formats : fonds de fonds Emerging Managers, fonds d’incubation partage de revenus contre seed money, fonds d’incubation mixant partage de revenus et participation au capital, ainsi que des fonds de private equity. Une plateforme de services proposera aux gérants qui le souhaitent l’hébergement, des systèmes d’information, les back et middle office, ou encore la promotion commerciale. Quinze personnes travailleront sur le projet.

Chiow Wei Lee a démissionné de ses fonctions de chief investment officer chez Tokio Marine Asset Management International (TMAI), rapporte Citywire Global. Ses fonctions sont reprises par l’actuel CEO, Kenji Kodama.Lee quittera ses fonctions le 13 novembre prochain. Les actifs sous gestion de TMAI s'élèvent à quelque 3,5 milliards de dollars.