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08/01/2013

GIC to get a new chief investment officer in February

Lim Chow Kiat, deputy shop chief investment officer, will be promoted to group CIO of the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) sovereign wealth fund, replacing Ng Kok Song, who will be retiring after 42 years as manager of the currency reserves of the city-state, on 1 February 2013. He had been group CIO since 2007.The new group CIO ill retain his responsibilities as chairman of GIC Asset Management until further notice.
08/01/2013

Schroders Property IM holds a real estate closing at EUR225m

Schroders Property Investment Management (SPrIM) has announced the first close of a Schroder Core European Property Fund specifically designed for Swiss tax exempt pension schemes. The fund closed on 21 December 2012 at EUR225 million. It is expected to double in size before a second close later this year. SPrIM is the Investment Manager, the fund was launched in partnership with Zurich Investment Foundation.
08/01/2013

Vanguard AM recruits a former iShares head

Vanguard Asset Management has recruited Axel Lomholt as head of its Europe product development and management function. He spent six years at Blackrock/BGI, where he was managing director and head of iShares product development for EMEA.Axel Lomholt will be responsible for managing the continued build-out of Vanguard’s product range and its ETF capital markets team, as well as providing technical support to the company’s client-facing functions. He will join the Vanguard Europe management team, will be based in London, and will report to managing director Tom Rampulla.Vanguard recently launched its first suite of European domiciled exchange traded funds (ETFs), which have garnered assets of roughly GBP170 million since launch. The pan-European business serves retail, IFA and institutional investors including pension schemes, insurance companies, multi-managers, funds-of-funds and sovereign wealth funds. Vanguard’s European headquarters are in London, with regional offices in Zurich, Paris and Amsterdam.
08/01/2013

Standard Life Investments recruits in Asia

The British asset management firm Standard Life Investments (SLI) is building its presence in Asia, with the recruitment of Allen Wang to direct institutional sales in Asia, Asian Investor reports. Wang previously spent 13 years at BlackRock, most recently as head of institutional activities in Taiwan and China. SLI is also seeking a head of wholesale activities for the region. Assets under management at SLI total about USD261bn, of which only USD1bn to USD2bn come from the Asia-Pacific region.
08/01/2013

Old Mutual hopes to double assets

Julian Ide, CEO of Old Mutual Global Investors, is hoping to double assets under management by the group from GBP13bn currently within three years, Financial Times Fund Management reports. The asset management is in the process of rebranding, after abandoning the name Skandia. As a part of this move, the firm has recruited 21 managers in the past three months. Additional recruitments of fund managers are expected.
08/01/2013

Pictet launches corporate EMD fund

Pictet & Cie is launching the Pictet Emerging Corporate Bonds fund, a sub-fund of its Luxembourg Sicav investing in private bonds from companies in emerging markets. The fund will be managed by Alain Nsiona Defise, who is based in London, and who left JPMorgan AM last year to join the Swiss asset management firm and become head of a team of specialists in emerging market corporate bonds.The fund has been registered in France since 10 December 2012.CharacteristicsISIN code: LU0844697853Front-end fees: Maximum 5%Withdrawal penalty: Maximum 1%Management commission: 1.5%
08/01/2013

DWS renames three FoFs managed by ARTS

On 7 January, DWS Investments (Deutsche Bank group) announced that on 21 December it released profiled wealth/diversified funds of funds for sale in Germany whose assets total EUR120m, and which since 2004 have been administered by DWS, but managed by ARTS Asset Management, an affiliate of the Austrian-German firm C-Quadrat. They had been known as RAM Konservativ, RAM Wachstum and RAM Dynamisch, and will now be available as DWS Concept ARTS Conservative, ARTS Balanced ARTS Dynamic. The products deploy a trend-following strategy.CharacteristicsName: DWS Concept ARTS CondervativeISIN code: LU0093745825Front-end fee: 3%Management fee: 1.35%TER: 1.71%Name: DWS Concept ARTS BalancedISIN code: LU0093745825Front-end fee: 4%Management fee: 1.60%TER: 1.90%Name: DWS Concept ARTS DynamicISIN code: LU0093746393Front-end fee: 5%Management fee: 1.85%TER: 2.03%
08/01/2013

Less than half of Italian fund managers beat their benchmark

45.7% of Italian-registered funds beat their benchmarks in 2012, Plus, the weekly supplement of Il Sole – 24 Ore, reports. This result is higher than in 2009, when 43% of managers did better than their benchmarks. In other years, the percentage of funds beating the index has varied from 10% to 25%. Italian-registered funds are better on their home field: 90% of managers beat the index when they are investing in the Milan stock exchange. For European equities, the percentage of winners is 26-36%. But the further away from Europe you get, the lower this number gets.
08/01/2013

Vacancies in Swiss finance are increasingly rare

Job vacancies in the finance sector in Switzerland are increasingly scarce. At the end of December 2012, 3,077 positions were vacant, as many as at the end of 2009. Free positions were down 7.1% compared with the beginning of the year. The decline is visible throughout all professions (banking, insurance, services companies). Finews reports that a growing number of positions are being awarded to young graduates and interns and that outsourcing is a trend which will be likely to last.
08/01/2013

Strong increase in assets at Fisch AM in 2012

As of the end of December 2012, assets under management by Fisch Asset Management totalled CHF7.3bn, compared with CHF5.2bn twelve months earlier, largely due to net subscriptions of CHF1.7bn, Fonds Professionell reports.
08/01/2013

Sarasin to publish 13 sustainability studies in 2013

In 2013, the sustainability analysis team at Sarasin will publish a detailed report every month including commentary on an economic theme or sector. Two publications will be released in January 2013: the sustainability of government borrowing, and tourism will be the first subjects treated.Among the subjects that will be addressed subsequently are communication technologies and consumer spending, water desalination, urban sustainability, sustainable investment in Brazil, and fracking.
08/01/2013

Cerberus fund sells most of it stake in Japanese Aozora bank

U.S. private-equity firm Cerberus Capital Management plans to sell most of its 57.8% stake in Japanese lender Aozora Bank. It will keep 7.74% and thus remain the largest shareholder in the bank. The unit price for the 632.50 million shares (including a greenshoe option of 41.25 million shares) at which Cerberus is prepared to sell will be determined between 16 and 18 January, Aozora states in a document for investors. The sale will mark a significant reduction in the presence of the Cerberus fund in Japan, where it is also a shareholder in Seibu Holdings, a railway and hotel group.
08/01/2013

AWD will miss its 2012 objectives

The German affiliate of Swiss Life, AWD, which in November 2012 was renamed as Swiss Life Select, has missed its annual profit objectives by a wide margin. The specialist in financial advising “will not even achieve 10%” of its expected CHF50m to CHF60m profits, Focus magazine reported on 6 January.The magazine, which refers to sources familiar with the matter, cites poor results and provisions that AWD was forced to make to cover reimbursement for poor advising, particularly in Austria, as reasons. Another reason given is the departure of several advisers.Swiss Life in November announced at its investor day that it was reorganising distribution of financial products and changing the name of its German affiliate. This will lead to a fourth quarter charge of CHF576m. The name change will cost Swiss Life CHF94m. Amortisations total CHF96m for activities abandoned in Slovakia and Hungary. The remaining CHF386m is goodwill.
08/01/2013

Société Générale Private Banking appoints two new country heads

Following Switzerland and Japan, Lxuembourg is getting a new head of private banking. Société Générale has appointed Olivier Lecler as deputy CEO of Société Générale Bank & Trust, its local entity, Agefi reports. Lecler, who had previously been head of Société Générale Private Banking (SGPB) Monaco, will be responsible for private banking activities in Luxembourg, replacing Claudio Bacceli, who becomes director of financial intermediary clients for the entire profession. Thierry Garde replaces Lecler as CEO of SGPB Monaco, He had previously been deputy director of the activity in Belgium, and previously held a similar role in the UK.
08/01/2013

Appointments at Sanford C. Bernstein and AllianceBernstein

AllianceBernstein has announced that its affiliate Sanford C. Bernstein, a specialist in research and brokerage in equities, has recruited the global head of equities from Jefferies & Company, Jason Griffith, as global head of trading. He will report directly to Robert van Brugge, chairman & CEO of the firm.Meanwhile, following the resignation of Richard Haxe as co-head of the EMEA client group, AllianceBernstein has promoted Timothy Ryan as sole head of the EMEA client group. He had previously been CEO of AllianceBernstein Ltd and co-head of the EMEA client group. He will continue to report to Robert Keith, head of institutional and retail client services, sales and marketing.
08/01/2013

Philippe Loiseau appointed as COO of Edmond de Rothschild group

According to multiple sources, Philippe Loiseau yesterday became chief operating officer (COO) at the Edmond de Rothschild group, Agefi reports. For five years, he had served as director of resources at Société Générale Private Banking, after seven years at PwC as a consultant, and eight years at the BNP Paribas private bank. Lioseau will be based in Paris, and will oversee operations and IT systems for the entire French-Swiss group. He will be involved in the mutualisation or co-ordination of resources (including back office, middle office and IT activities) as part of a strategic plan for 2016 unveiled last month, the newspaper reports.
08/01/2013

New head of marketing at Pax World Management

The head of marketing at Eaton Vance, Judy May, has joined the SRI asset management firm Pax World Management as senior vice president of marketing. She will report to Joe Keefe, chairman & CEO.
08/01/2013

Munich Re invests in wind energy in France via MEAG

As part of its EUR2.5bn Renewable Energies and New Technologies (RENT) programme, Munich Re has invested an amount in the hundreds of millions of euros to acquire a 40% stake in a joint venture which has acquired 32 wind farms in France. The units, with a total power generating capacity of 321.4 megawatts, were added to the French electricity network between 2006 and 2012; they use turbines from various manufacturers.Munich Re is participating in the deal via its asset management joint venture with Ergo, the Munich-based MEAG. The other two partners are GE Energy Financial Services, which also holds 40% of shares in the joint venture, and EDF Energies Nouvelles, which controls the remainder and is responsible for operating the facilities.
08/01/2013

MEAG recruits a CEO

Philipp Waldstein Wartenberg, who had been head of group strategic funding & portfolio at UniCredit in Milan since 2006, was on 1 December appointed as a managing director of MEAG (EUR24bn in assets), to be responsible for the portfolio management of securities, currencies and money market instruments.Meanwhile, MEAG, a joint venture of Munich Re and Ergo, has announced that its CEO, Dieter Wolf, 62, will be retiring on 31 March 2013.
08/01/2013

Strong sales for Union's institutional RE unit

Christoph Schumacher, one of Union Investment Institutional Property GmbH’s MDs, has announced that net subscriptions and subscription commitments from institutional clients to in-house real estate products (EUR3.5bn in assets) totalled over EUR1.5bn in 2012, compared with EUR1bn in 2011.The open-ended real estate funds reserved for institutional investors UniInstitutional European Real Estate and UniInstitutional German Real Estate attracted EUR620m. The second fund, launched on 17 October, was three times oversubscribed within the first five hours. It is a fund reserved for religious organisations, co-operative banks and foundations, with subscriptions limited to EUR2m per investor.Institutional real estate funds have also posted subscription commitments of EUR960m, of which EUR850m were for retirement schemes, banks and insurers, and EUR100m in additional new subscriptions to existing institutional funds.Lastly, Union last year launched the institutional infrastructure fund UniInstututional Erneuerbare Energien Sicav-SIF, which specialises in renewable energies, particularly wind, in Europe. The fund reached EUR48m at its first closing.
08/01/2013

DJ Credit Suisse hedge fund index up 0.99%

The Dow Jones Credit Suisse Core Hedge Fund index rose 0.99% in December, as each component of the index contributed to gains. The best-performing strategy in December was event-driven (2.14%), followed by emerging markets (1.34%) and Global Macro (0.89%), while the worst performer was managed futures (0.15%). For the year as a whole, the benchmark index shows gains of 3.38%, with contributions of 6.99% from convertible arbitrage and 6.75% for event-driven. Managed futures strategies finished the year with losses of 5.51%.
08/01/2013

Inflows of over USD85bn for iShares ETPs

iShares has posted inflows of USD85.3bn on USD262.7bn in the ETP sector, iShares has announced in a statement released on 7 January.All regions of the world contributed to the growth of inflows at iShares. Inflows to US products represented a record USD61bn, beating a previous record of USD59.1bn set in 2007.In Europe, inflows totalled USD18.3bn, equivalent to 56% of subscriptions to European ETPs.iShares says that ETFs represented a preferred means of access to the bond market. Inflows to fixed income ETFs at iShares totalled USD28.8bn, representing 41% of all subscriptions to bond ETFs.As of 31 December 2012, assets under management at iShares totalled USD758.6bn.
08/01/2013

Coverage rate for pension funds continues to rise in December

The average coverage rate for the liabilities of US corporate pension funds rose 1.9 percentage points in the month of December, to a total of 7.63%, according to BNY Mellon. For the year as a whole, the coverage rate is up 1 percentage point. In the month under review, assets in pension funds rose 0.9% due to the strength of stock markets, while liabilities, for their part, were down 1.7%. The actualisation rate rose 13 basis points to 3.89% for companies rated Aa.
08/01/2013

Mandarine Europe Opportunités fund launched

Mandarine Gestion has announced that it is adding to its “Growth” unit with the launch of the Mandarine Europe Opportunités fund, which invests in European growth shares of all cap sizes. It is managed by Marie-Jeanne Missoffe, who joined the team led by Joëlle Morlet-Selmer and Diane Bruno from SPGP in late 2012 (see NewsManagers of 23 October, 2012). Mandarine Europe Opportunités is actively managed, and fully invested in equities (90% to 100%) without the constraint of a benchmark, sector or cap size. Within an investment universe of 250 shares, 50 to 60 are selected to construct the portfolio. Three perennial drivers of growth have been identified for stock-picking by the manager: innovation, leadership and geographical diversification. The sectoral and geographical structure of the portfolio are then adjusted according to a top-down analysis. The “Growth” unit at Mandarine Gestion now includes three funds specialised in growth equities: France, with Mandarine Opportunités, European Small and Mid caps with Mandarine Unique, and now Europe, with Mandarine Europe Opportunités. Characteristics ISIN code: FR0011351626 (R share class), FR0011352160 (I share class)Currency: EUR Minimal initial subscription: 1 share (R share class), EUR1m (I share class)
08/01/2013

Azimut targets Latin America

The Italian independent asset management firm Azimut is preparing to start up in South America, its leader, Pietro Giuliani, has told Milano Finanza. The director also says that the firm is expected to have finished the year 2012 with net profits of over USD140m, Bluerating reports.
08/01/2013

Ignis AM launches a new fund in Italy

Ignis Asset Management has rececived a sales license in Italy for its absolute return bond fund, Ignis Absolute Return Credit, Bluerating reports. The fund is managed by Chris Bowie. Ignis AM offers six other funds in Italy.
08/01/2013

BNY Mellon launches a central securities depository entity

BNY Mellon has received regulatory approval to launch a new Issuer Central Securities Depository (CSD) entity that will offer market participants enhanced interoperability and efficiency in the global post-trade arena.BNY Mellon CSD SA/NV will offer issuer, settlement and safekeeping services for the benefit of all market participants across Europe and the wider global marketplace.Incorporated in Belgium as a non-bank subsidiary of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, BNY Mellon CSD will be regulated by the National Bank of Belgium. Chris Prior-Willeard has been appointed CEO of the new entity; he brings over 30 years’ experience in the financial services industry, including a range of executive positions within BNY Mellon.
08/01/2013

Vanguard shatters inflows records

Vanguard last year destroyed the record in the asset management sector for net inflows, with USD141.4bn in 2012, Financial Times Fund Management reports, citing preliminary figures from the asset management firm. The previous record was set by JPMorgan in 2008 with USD129.6bn. Bill McNabb, CEO of Vanguard, admits that the low cost of funds from the firm has been “incredibly important” to the success of the firm, but that the “reputation and consistency” of the manager also counted.
08/01/2013

Goldman and Perry to float a part of LEG on stock market

According to reports in Die Welt, the Whitehall fund from Goldman Sachs and the private equity investor Perry Capital are planning to launch part (probably one third) of the residential real estate firm LEG (91,000 housing units), which they acquired in 2008 from the German region of North Rhine/Westphalia for EUR3.4bn, of which EUR2.6bn were debt, on the German stock market. The IPO, planned for the first half of February, would be led by Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank.
08/01/2013

Pyramis hires head of portfolio management

Pam R. Holding, who had been managing director, global value equities at Putnam Investments from 2001 to 2009, has joined Pyramis Global Advisors (PGA, Fidelity group), which has USD190bn in assets under management, of which USD112bn are in equity products, as head of portfolio management. In this newly-created position, Holding will report to Young Chin, chief investment officer.Holding will be responsible for directing equity portfolio management teams, and overseeing strategy and its implementation for institutional clients.

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