In the last month of 2011, hedge funds saw net outlfows of USD5.2bn, and assets as of the end of December totalled USD1.64trn, a level 7.7% lower than at the end of 2010, according to BarclayHedge and TrimTabs.The BarclayHedge hedge fund index fell 0.4% in December, after a decline of 1.4% in November. Since May 2011, hedge funds have seen losses every month, except in October. For 2011 as a whole, hedge funds lost 5.5%, while the S&P was flat.

Skandia Investment Group (SIG) has removed Julius Lipner of Aviva Investors from its Skandia UK Strategic Best Ideas Fund. The mandate stood at GBP7m out of assets under management of GBP52.1m as of the end of December.Lee Freeman-Shor, portfolio manager for Skandia Investment Group, said: “We have made the decision to remove the mandate from the Skandia UK Strategic Best Ideas Fund due to the uncertainty and unknown consequences, created by Aviva Investors’ announcement that it plans to review active equity management and concentrate on fixed income, real estate and multi asset solutions.”Lipner’s mandate will be equally redistributed amongst the remaining managers within the Skandia UK Strategic Best Ideas Fund (Richard Packett and Mark Lyttleton of BlackRock, Phil Hardy of Polar Capital, Colin McLean of SVM, Tim Steer of Artemis and Paul Casson of Henderson).

Schroders is going to launch in the United Kingdom the Schroder Strategic Bond Fund (subject to FSA approval) which aims to achieve a total return by investing across a broad range of fixed income markets. The fund will be managed by Gareth Isaac, senior portfolio manager, who joined Schroders in 2011 from GLG. The alternate manager will be Bob Jolly, head of global macro.The benchmark unconstrained fund will invest in fixed income opportunities across the globe while actively allocating between government bonds, investment grade corporates, high yield corporates and emerging market debt of both governments and credit. Additionally the fund may use derivatives to limit downside risk, with 80% of the portfolio being hedged back to sterling.

The Ethos foundation on 7 February recommended that shareholders in Novartis reject the reelection of professors William Brody and Srikant Datar at the general shareholders’ meeting to be held on 23 February 2012, due to the impossibility of voting on pay scales this year. The two men are members of the remuneration committee, which did not recommend any changes to the structure of pay scales, despite the opposition of 39% of shareholders at the general shareholders’ meeting in 2011. The foundation, which includes more than 120 Swiss pension funds and foundations, claims that the Novartis CEO, Joe Jimenez, was paid CHF15.7m in 2011. It also increased 21.7% compared with 2010, even though profits fell.The total pay for the chairman of the board of directors, Daniel Vasella, was CHF13.5m, This far exceeds the pay for other non-executive chairmen of the board at international groups comparable to Novartis, and those of other non-executive chairmen at other Swiss firms belonging to the SMI index.

TheScreener is launching a new service to evaluate directly comparable funds and ETFs, Agefi Switzerland reports. The service provides a way to exhaustively determine when passively-managed investments outperform actively-managed investments, and vice versa. The new service covers 15,000 funds and ETFs.

Although JP Morgan Chase appears to have thrown in the towel, the list of potential buyers for the asset management activities of Deutsche Bank, particularly DWS in the United States, still includes six candidates, Mutual Fund Wire reports: Guggenheim Partners is said to have joined the small remaining group of contenders which also includes Power Corp of Canada, Macquarie Group, State Street Corp, Ameriprise Financial and Apax Partners.

According to a survey by TNS Infratest on behalf of Axa Investment Managers (Axa IM) of a representative sample of 1,000 people in September 2011, 77% of German investors do not know what the term “emerging markets” means (38%), or give an incorrect definition (39%). This is not surprising since only 1% of Germans have already invested in emerging markets, says Karin Kleinemas, head of marketing for northern Europe. 69% of respondents did not know that emerging markets have more potential for growth than already industrialised countries.

In what areas will retail asset management firms invest effort this year? According to a survey by Cerulli Associates, 75% of firms are planning to scale up their marketing efforts.Cerulli points out that many firms are in the process of setting up structures that put marketing and sales on a par. This is a notable development compared with the era when marketing was a section of the sales department.“It is true that the marketing function is designed to support sales efforts, but now, the two groups work in close collaboration to develop strategies via several media including the internet, email, social media, and generating prospects,” explains Alec Papazian, a senior analyst at Cerulli.

The European Commission will today present a proposal which would create a legal status for European foundations, which would allow institutions to be active in other EU countries beyond their country of origin, by eliminating taxation obstacles, Expansión reports.The foundations are important economic actors, whose assets are estimated at over EUR350bn. The proposals would preserve a double system which would allow for national regimes to coexist alongside the European regime.Political foundations would be excluded from the rules, as they are already covered by separate legislation.

The Swedish SEB group has merged its London-based boutique Key Asset Management with its alternative investment team (AIT) in Stockholm, Hedge Week reports. The new merged entity will be led by Mikael Spångberg as managing director based in Stockholm, and Chris Rule as deputy CEO and CIO, in London, Key AM is specialised in funds of hedge funds, while SEB AIT has expertise in seed capital and incubation. The merger coincides with the departure of Chris Jones, who spent seven years as head of Key AM.

The additional retirement institution for public employees (ERAFP) has launched a consultation to award a real estate asset management mandate. The consultation will issue two allocations, corresponding to two types of mandates.The first will be for an allocation to private properties in France, mostly offices, commercial and residential properties. This allocation will select three candidates, two of them for standby mandates. The total investment amount will be about EUR310m in the next three years.The second mandate is for an allocation to private properties in Europe. This allocation will also select three candidates, two of them for standby mandates. Investments will total about EUR345m in the first three years.The new mandates must comply with the ERAFP SRI charter.

SEI has announced that it has won a fund administration, trust and custody mandate for the new range of Irish-registered Qualified Investment Funds (QIF) from the London-based asset manager Asset Value Investors (AVI, USD2.6bn in assets). AVI has chosen the QIF formula which allows investors a regulated vehicle while preserving flexibility of investment strategies.

On Tuesday, Goldman Sachs Asset Management (USD828bn in assets as of the end of December) announced that it has acquired the defined-contribution retirement planning specialist Dwight Asset Management (USD42bn in assets as of the end of December) from Old Mutual Asset Management (USD224bn as of the end of September). The sale price for this deal which will be finalised in second quarter has not been disclosed.

Prudential Asset Management has recruited Jeremy Hall as head of sales for northern Asia, as part of a development of its activities serving institutional investors, Asian Investor reports. Hall, who had previously worked at RREEF (Deutsche Bank), will be based in Hong Kong, and will serve China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan.

The working group at the French financial market regulator, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), on general shareholders’ meetings, chaired by Olivier Poupart-Lafarge, a member of the college, has delivered its conclusions. The group has laid out 34 proposals which are centred around four themes: dialogue between shareholders and issuers; voting; the meeting office and voting on regulated conventions. In general, the report delivers an overall positive opinion of the functioning of general shareholders’ meetings in France, and consequently proposes areas for improvement in the areas given. In the chapter on voting, the working group proposes that a third type of vote be introduced to realise the concept in French law of a “genuine abstention” as opposed to a “nay” vote. The group also proposes an improvement to the relatively comp[lex voting mechanism for non-resident shareholders. At the conclusion of the public consultation, which will remain open until 7 March, the group’s proposals, which do not require amendments to legislative or regulatory texts, may be applied at the recommendation of the AMF, and subsequently at shareholders’ meetings held from 1 January 2013.

Although they have received written support from the SEC and the Department of Labor, two former employees of Fidelity have had their complaints against their former employer dismissed by the US Court of Appeal for the 1st Circuit, Mutual Fund Wire reports. The court of appeals has overturned a prior judgement by a Boston federal judge that the two people who called the attention of authorities to irregularities at the business that employed them (“whistleblowers”) were protected by terms in the Sarbanes-Oxley whistleblowing law. The court of appeals found that the Sarbanes-Oxley law applied exclusively to publicly-traded businesses, while the whistleblowers were employees of private affiliates of Fidelity.

Accola, Investeam and MiddleNext on 7 February unveiled a newly-created common investment fund (FCP) which will allow 20 publicly-traded French midcaps to issue bonds to be purchased by the FCP fund, whose shares will then be subscribed to by professional investors. As the needs of SMEs and ETIs are enormous in a context of rare and costly bank financing, Accola and Investeam have developed a scheme to meet this demand in the form of a contractual horizon FCP, Micado France 2018, for which Portzamparc Gestion will be responsible for managing. The two investment businesses CM-CIC Securities and Portzamparc, a stock market firm, approached the firms issuing debt, and with the legal advice of CMS Bureau Francis Lefebvre and Fidal, developed a common methodology for the issuing of bonds at a set rate to mature simultaneously in 6 years, from several mid-sized publicly-traded firms, which will allow them access for the first time to the bond markets. The bonds will be issued by firms with a total market capitalisation of EUR30m to EUR1bn, and earnings of nor more than EUR2bn. Portzamparc Gestion will select firms on the basis of their credit quality, and will aim for diversification of funds, particularly by sector. The overall size objective for the fund is EUR300m; each business will need to issue EUR5m to EUR20m. The fund, notably, is not planning to mutualise risks, and each issuer will retain its own portion of the risks. At the conclusion of this construction phase, the portfolio will include a portion of public and private ETIs, which will represent 80%, and a 20% exposure to highly liquid French non-financial sector corporate bonds from private investment grade businesses; that proportion may eventually rise to 40%. Bonds from the firms, listed on Alternext or Euronext, will be listed on Alternext. The fund will be sold by Investeam.

In January, the Pimco Total Return Fund (USD250.5bn), managed by Bill Gross, made 2.44%, compared with 0.45% for its benchmark index, and has posted USD230.6m in net subscriptions, the first in four months, Mutual Fund Wire reports. In 2011, the fund underperformed its benchmark by 3.68 points, and saw net outflows of USD5bn.

Sal Naro, former head of international bonds at UBS and a former co-managing partner at Sailfish Capital, has launched its own boutique, Coherence Capital Partners, based in New York, a specialist in bonds, Investment Europe reports. The creation of Coherence Capital is related to an MBO at the insurance entity of Jefferson National, Naro’s last employer, where he had been a shareholder, vice-chairman of Jefferson National Financial and CEO of Jefferson National Asset Management. The management team at Coherence Capital includes Vincent Mistretta, former head of portfolio management at Jefferson AM, Greg McKay, former chief operating officer at Jefferson AM, and Robert Del Grande, former CFO at Jefferson AM.

Last year, net subscriptions of owners’ equity to closed-end German funds rose 0.2% to EUR5.8461bn, compared with EUR5.8351bn in 2010, according to estimates by the VGF professional association, taking into account the 39 member firms and shareholders who raised at least EUR5m in owners’ equity in the past three years, a sample of 168 firms, of whom 112 had disclosed their results to the VGF. Inflows from private clients represented EUR4.8078bn, compared with EUR5.2125bn the previous year, while institutional investors increased 67%, to EUR1.3083bn. As of the end of 2011, assets in funds were down to EUR9.8908bn, compared with EUR10.8003bn twelve months previously. DWS Access (Deutsche Bank group) has stated that it was the closed fund manager with the largest inflows last year, with EUR504.3m in owners’ equity. The largest success was the DWS Access Deutsche Bank Türme fund, with a volume of EUR665.7m and subscriptions of EUR340m.

For the first time, Barbara Knoflach, head of SEB Asset Management, on Tuesday did not rule out the possibility that the open-ended real estate fund ImmoInvest (over EUR6bn in assets) may have to be liquidated, Handelsblatt reports. The fund, which has been frozen to redemptions since May 2010, still has not reached the 30% liquidity level considered necessary for redemptions to be reopened, and a sale of the family jewels, the 19-building complex at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, is taking longer than expected. The properties are valued at EUR1.4bn, but the market is difficult, and buyers are taking their time, though the deadline to reopen the fund is May 2012, as it is for the Credit Suisse Euroreal, the other major real estate fund currently closed to redemptions.

In January, three open-ended real estate funds, Deka-ImmobilienEuropa, Deka-ImmobilienGlobal and WestInvest InterSelect had net subscriptions of EUR400m, comparedf with EUR320m in the corresponding month of 2011. Of this total, about EUR270m were from reinvestment of dividends distributed by two Deka funds. However, net subscriptions in January 2010 totalled EUR415m.

Pioneer Investments has launched a fund dedicated entirely to the Italian bond market, Bluerating reports. The Pioneer Obbligazionario Sistems Italia a distribuzione fund will be composed of Italian government bonds and high quality corporate bonds issued by businesses based in Italy with healthy balance sheets and convincing business plans.

Six British consumers out of ten have no appetite for investment risk, according to an annual survey (FSA Consumer Awareness Survey 2011) recently published by the British Financial Services Authority (FSA). Only 4% of the 2,063 people surveyed say they are prepared to take on more risk in the hopes of higher returns. The FSA reports that the consumers have a “slightly” higher aversion to risk than in 2010.

Standard Life Investments, the fourth-largest shareholder in Xstrata, with about 2% of capital, will vote against a merger with Glencore, as the operation “clearly undervalues” the mining company, Investment Week reports. For his part, Richard Buxton, head of UK equities at Schroders, has told Reuters that he shares SLI’s position.

“Institutionals bought, and retail investors sold,” said Thomas Neiße, president of the German BVI association of asset management firms on Tuesday, discussing investment flows in 2011. Institutional funds (Spezialfonds) attracted a net total of EUR45.3bn, while mandates outside funds received EUR0.8bn, but open-ended funds saw net outflows of EUR16.6bn. Overall, the German asset management sector saw net inflows of EUR29.5bn.Total assets as of the end of December for institutional funds and mandates wree EUR1.132trn, compared with EUR1.122trn twelve months previously. However, assets under management in open-ended funds were down by EUR59bn in one year, to EUR651bn.For open-ended funds, only funds specialised in real estate had net subscriptions in 2011, totalling EUR1.2bn. The largest net outflows were from bond funds (EUR5.8bn) and guaranteed funds (EUR2.6bn, of which EUR0.9bn were for maturing products). Diversified funds, for their part, saw net redemptions of EUR2.3bn (EUR2.8bn in net subscriptions for balanced funds, EUR3.9bn for predominantly bond products). Equity funds had net outflows of EUR2.3bn.

Elles devraient avoir la possibilité de durcir les ratios réglementaires pour gérer un risque systémique identifié localement

Alors que quarante prêts sous-jacents sont arrivés à maturité, seuls cinq ont été remboursés dans les temps selon Barclays Capital

La Chine refuse que ses compagnies achètent du CO2 alors que la participation de l'aérien au marché du carbone doit soutenir les prix

Le gestionnaire américain EIG Global Energy Partners, dont le fonds souverain chinois CIC est actionnaire minoritaire depuis peu, pourrait faire faux bond à la plateforme de cotation de Goldman Sachs, GSTrUE, pour introduire son véhicule d’investissement Gateway sur la Bourse de Hong Kong. Un signe clair selon le quotidien du manque d’attractivité du cadre réglementaire aux Etats-Unis.