Du nouveau du côté des fonds de droit français au mois d’août ... Ainsi, selon Europerformance-SIX Telekurs, l’hémorragie sur les fonds de trésorerie régulière a été stoppée avec un encours en hausse de 3 %, les souscriptions nettes s'élevant à 9,49 milliards d’euros. Ce type de fonds est quasiment responsable à lui seul de la progression de cette classe d’actifs dans son ensemble (9,84 milliards) dont l’encours s’inscrit à 376,16 milliards d’euros – soit une progression en phase de 2,9 %.Un cran en deça, l’encours des fonds obligataires a progressé toutes catégories confondues de 1,6 %. Mais en termes de souscriptions nettes, seuls les fonds obligataires de la zone euro ont collecté (110 millions d’euros), les deux autres catégories (haut rendement et internationales) ayant perdu 10 millions chacune. En termes d’encours pourtant, les fonds de la zone euro et internationales progressent respectivement de 1,6 % et 2 %. Ce qui s’explique par un «effet marché», les fonds de la zone euro affichant un gain de 1,44 % et ceux exposés à l’international de 1,48 %. Du côté des fonds actions, la baisse globale de leur encours de 2,3 % masque des réalités sensiblement différentes. Les fonds de la zone euro accusent une baisse de 4,3 % - la baisse de l’encours la plus forte – et les fonds investis sur la France de 3,4 %. A l’inverse, les fonds Asie/Pacifique sont les seuls fonds actions avec les fonds actions internationales à voir leur encours progresser - de 1,2 % et 0,4 % respectivement. Pourtant, les fonds actions françaises ont affiché des souscriptions nettes (120 millions d’euros) comme les fonds Asie/Pacifique et à l’international (180 millions dans les deux cas). Ces chiffres sont à rapprocher des performances de ces fonds. En moyenne, ceux sur la zone euro et ceux investis sur la France affichent des pertes de 3,96 % et 3,58 % tandis que les fonds sur l’Asie gagnent en moyenne 0,23 %. Quant aux fonds d’actions internationales, ils ne perdent en moyenne que 0,37 %.

A Plus Finance a annoncé lundi 13 septembre le lancement de deux nouveaux fonds «IR 2010". Le fonds commun de placement dans l’innovation (FCPI) A Plus Innovation 10 investit dans des PME françaises innovantes, dans le secteur du e-business et du green business. Le fonds d’investissement de proximité (FIP) A Plus Planet 10 est centré sur le développement durable à travers la filière bois dans toutes ses composantes et les PME qui profitent, dans la construction et l’immobilier, de la mise aux normes Haute Qualité Environnementale (HQE). Ce fonds s’inscrit dans le cadre du mécénat avec la fondation GoodPlanet. Dans les deux cas, les fonds ont une durée de vie de 7 ans. A noter que A Plus Finance finalise aussi le lancement d’un troisième fonds spécialement destiné au financement des PME arrivées à un stade de développement plus avancé.

DNCA Finance vient d’annoncer l’arrivée de deux nouveaux gérants, Rajesh Varma et Damien Charlet, et l’extension de son expertise à l’international. Rajesh Varma va gérer un nouveau fonds global dont la poche actions pourra varier de 60 à 100 % du portefeuille, indique un communiqué. De son côté, Damien Charlet sera associé à la gestion et au développement des fonds diversifiés flexibles DNCA Evolutif et DNCA Evolutif PEA pour faire équipe avec Xavier Delaye et Augustin Picquendar. Avant de créer sa structure début 2009, Rajesh Varma est resté six ans chez Carmignac Gestion. Il y était spécialiste des marchés asiatiques (Chine, Inde, Japon) pour l’ensemble de la gamme et en charge de deux fonds. Quant à Damien Charlet, il exerçait ses fonctions depuis 2006 chez SGAM où il gérait des fonds diversifiés et Total Return.

Jérôme Peltier a rejoint UBS Investment Bank, en tant que co-head de la banque d’investissement pour la France aux côtés de Charles-Henri Le Bret, au début du mois de septembre. Il est rattaché à Simon Warshaw, responsable européen des activités de banque d’investissement pour UBS Investment Bank.Jérôme Peltier assurait précédemment les responsabilités de co-head of global banking et de co- head of investment banking coverage pour Deutsche Bank en France où il a travaillé pendant dix ans.

Morgan Stanley a annoncé lundi 13 septembre la nomination de Paul Price comme responsable des ventes institutionnelles (head of international sales) de Morgan Stanley Investment Management (MSIM).Basé à Londres, l’intéressé sera responsable des ventes à l’international et aux intermédiaires, des relations avec les consultants et des équipes de business development pour l’Europe, le Moyen-Orient, l’Afrique, l’Asie et l’Amérique latine.Il était en dernier lieu responsable mondial de l’institutionnel chez Pioneer Global Asset Management.

Le comité exécutif de la CNMV a autorisé vendredi 10 septembre le Banco de Valencia à augmenter sa participation dans Nordkapp Inversiones et dans Nordkapp Gestión à 100 et 99,99 % respectivement. Dans un premier temps, la banque passe de 34,25 % à 87,97 % dans Nordkapp Inversiones, ce qui lui donne le contrôle de nordkapp Gestión.Le groupe Nordkapp gère 571 millions d’euros au travers de 28 sicav, cinq fonds d’investissement deux hedge funds de droit espagnol, deux fonds de pension et 900 mandats.

East Capital on Monday announced its forthcoming launch of the Special Opportunities Fund II, which will target investments in companies with a positive outlook for future operations but which, due to market or owner-specific reasons, can be acquired at valuations which are lower than those suggested by the companies’ fundamentals. In addition, the fund will also invest in distressed situations. It will invest in Russia and in all regions within Eastern Europe. The fund will target investments with a clear trigger for revaluation and with exit opportunities within a four-year period. When appropriate, East Capital will assume an active role in companies through board representation, or other means. The new fund follows the launch of the East Capital Special Opportunities Fund in the second quarter of 2009. East Capital Explorer AB, a Swedish listed entity investing mainly in East Capital’s private equity and semi-public equity funds, will invest EUR35m in the fund during the fourth quarter of 2010. The Special Opportunities Fund II is a Luxemburg domiciled, EUR denominated fund and will also be open to other institutional and qualified investors. The fund term is four years and the maximum fund size is limited to EUR100m.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } In July, Petercam launched the Luxembourg-registered fund Petercam L Bonds Euro Short Term High Yield fund (LU0517222484 for E-class shares and LU0517222302 for F-class shares), which aim to generate attractive returns on a short-term investment (maximum 4 years), an advantageous configuration when returns on money markets are near zero. Without exposing investors to excessive risk, as defaults very rarely take place close to the maturity date, the fund aims to profit from a newly active primary market in high yield papers, which has led many issuers either to recall their responsibilities before maturity, or to refinance their capital structure at more advantageous conditions. In addition, money market funds are often not authorised to invest outside the investment grade category, while high yield managers focus on the 4-8 year segment, and therefore allocate only a small part of their assets to shorter maturity durations. In addition, Petercam remarks, trading desks no longer have large amounts of owners’ equity to trade on behalf of banks. The fund, a sub-fund of the Petercam L Fund Sicav, is managed by Bernard Lalière, without the constraint of a benchmark index, and hedged for currency risk. Management commission is 0.70%. Currently, assets total about EUR20m, while seed capital from the Petercam private bank has been a mere EUR2m.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The British management firm Threadneedle has announced that its Luxembourg fund US Mid & Small Cap Equities (USD5.57bn) will be liquidated. No further subscriptions have been accepted for the product since 24 August. Active and passive assets of the fund will be transferred on 23 September to the Threadneedle (Lux) American Select (USD5.34bn in assets as of 31 August). The merger was decided on for reasons of economic efficiency, as the excessively low level of assets rendered profitable operation impossible.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Börsen-Zeitung reports that the Landesbanken which control about half of the asset management firm DekaBank have finally granted a mandate to Citibank to initiate the process of selling their stake. Nearly a year ago, DekaBank was valued by Deloitte at EUR4.5bn.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } On 13 September, Allianz Global Investors (AGI) announced that as of 1 November, it will cease to sell its Riester and Rürup government-supplemented retirement savings products. It appears that the products were not destined for success, and that the volumes placed in the products figured only in the hundreds of millions of Euros for the Riester, and in tens of millions for the Rürup. Continuing efforts to promote the products under such conditions was not economically defensible, as Allianz and cominvest are already offering successful unit-linked products in Riester and Rürup vehicles, which invest in products from AGI, including the Allianz Fonds BasisRente and cominvest Riester-FörderDepot. However, AGI’s current savings policies will be maintained, and savings investors may continue to contribute to their policies.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } A collective of major investors, including Aviva Investors and the French national pension fund, the Fonds de réserve pour les retraites(FRR), are preparing to write to the directors of market authorities and stock market companies to call for sustainable development reporting to be added to the listing rules. The “call to action” comes as part of an initiative started by Aviva Investors last year to promote the United Nataions Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI). The initiative is supported by investors representing a total of USD558bn in assets under management. The objective of the collective initiative is to promote a market environment which requires businesses to evaluate the more or less responsible sustainability characteristics of their model, and which encourages them to submit a voluntary sustainable development strategy to a vote at their general shareholders’ meeting,” a statement released on Monday by Aviva Investors says. The members of the “call to action” initiative currently include Aviva Investors, the FRR, SNS Asset Management, Triodos Asset Management, Mn Services N.V., The Cooperative Asset Management, and Northwest & Ethical Investments. It is also supported by Ceres.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } On Friday, 10 September, the listings on the segment of the Xetra electronic trading platform from Deutsche Börse gained four lines, all equities ETFs from ComStage (Commerzbank group). The products, all Luxembourg-registered products which replicate FTSE indices, bring the total number of ETFs listed in Frankfurt to 697. Name ISIN code TERComStage ETF FTSE 100 Short Strategy TR LU0488316562 0.45%ComStage ETF FTSE 100 Leveraged TR LU0488316646 0.45%ComStage ETF FTSE 250 TR LU0488316307 0.30%ComStage ETF FTSE All-Share TR LU0488316489 0.35%

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } After closing the fund in May with USD300m in assets, soon after it was launched on 19 February (see Newsmanagers of 3 May), GLG Partners has announced that it is planning to reopen subscriptions to its UCITS-compliant equity market neutral fund UK Alpha Select for a further USD250m, from 20 September.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Renaissance Technologies has ultimately decided to continue to manage the money of outside investors in its hedge funds Renaissance Institutional Equities and Renaissance Institutional Futures (USD6.5bn in total), which it had planned to close, but which have recently rebounded (+14% and +6% in the first eight months of the year), according to a letter from the co-CEOs, Peter Brown and Robert Mercer, to investors obtained by the Wall Street Journal. Renaissance is also planning to reduce commissions for REIF, the larger of the two funds.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has announced that it has fined Trillium Brokerage Services USD1m, and handed down fines and suspensions for 11 of its employees, for using an illegal high-frequency trading strategy, the Wall Street Journal reports. Nine traders jammed the market more than 46,000 times with illegitimate orders on equities between 2006 and 2007.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Fromer IBM executive Robert Moffat Jr., one of the 12 people to plead guilty to complicity in insider trading at Galleon Group, was sentenced on Monday to six months in prison and a fine of USD50,000. Bob Moffat admitted that he had given tips on Advanced Micro Devices and Lenovo to Danielle Chiesi, who was a consultant for New Castle Funds. At the time, he was director of Lenovo.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } With very few exceptions, the proportion of sales of funds abroad by Italian fund management firms is near zero, Plus24, the money supplement of the newspaper Il Sole – 24 Ore reports. UBI, which manages a total of EUR21.3bn, and Bipiemme, which has EUR16.8bn under management, sell no funds outside the borders of Italy. Intesa Sanpaolo, with EUR115.8bn, sells only 3.6% of its funds abroad. The two most international firms, according to the table published in Plus24, are Pioneer, with a 14.2% market share, and Generali, with 16.09%.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Before the end of the year, Invesco PowerShares will launch ETFs based on each of the four Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW) indices, for which fund managers will be required to obtain an exclusive license. The indices are the KBW Premium Yield Equity REIT Index, KBW Financial Sector Dividend Yield Index, KBW Global ex-U.S. Financial Sector Index and KBW Property & Casualty Index. As of the end of June, PowerShares indices had assets of over USD44bn.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The alternative management firm Nexar Capital Group SCA, founded one year ago by former managers from SGAM AI, announced on 13 September that it has acquired Allianz Alternative Asset Management (AAAm) from Allianz France, its majority shareholder, and Allianz Global Investors Europe. The acquisition price was not disclosed. Since 1981, AAAm has offered its clients a full range of speculative funds of funds, led by Jean-François Vert, an expert in the sector, who will move to the Nexar platform along with the team from AAAm. The founding partners of Nexar, Arié Assayag CEO, and Eric Attias, CIO, have said that AAAm’s funds represent a valuable complement to the investment services of Nexar, and that the expertise of the European network of AAAm will come as an addition to the speculative fund of fund activities of Nexar, which are largely centred in New York. The strategic partnership which Nexar has concluded with the private equity firm Aquiline Capital Partners, based in New York, has put it in a position to act as a consolidator in the fragmented fund of fund sector. “We are happy that the strong point of the Nexar team in solutions which generate alpha will continue to be recognised; the collaboration between AAAm and Nexar confirms our opinion that the sector is ready for consolidation,” says Jeff Greenberg, CEO of Aquiline.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Invesco, which has registered six Morgan Stanley funds in France and 13 other European countries (Invesco US Value Equity Fund, Invesco US Small Cap Growth Fund, Invesco Japanese Value Equity Fund, Invesco Japanese Equity Advantage Fund, Invesco Global Value Equity Fund and Invesco Global Small Cap Value Fund) following its integration of the activities of Van Kampen (see Newsmanagers of 10 September), has announced assets as of the end of August of USD573.8bn, compared with USD580.3bn one month earlier, and USD557.7bn as of the end of June. As of the end of May, before the integration of Van Kampen, assets under management totalled USD430bn. The management firm states that, excluding QQQ funds, long-term products show net subscriptions. The rising US dollar has resulted in a USD2bn reduction in assets in August. Meanwhile, Invesco says it completed its acquisition of the Australian equities management firm Concord Capital, with USD3.1bn in assets, last month.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } DNCA Finance has announced the arrival of two new managers, Rajesh Varma and Damien Charlet, and is extending its expertise internationally, a statement says. Varma will manage a new global fund whose equities allocation may range from 60% to 100% of the portfolio. Charlet, for his part, will be involved in the management and development of the flexible diversified funds DNCA Evolutif and DNCA Evolutif PEA, along with Xavier Delaye and Augustin Picquendar. Varma was previously a manager at Carmignac Gestion, specialised in Asian markets (China, India, Japan) for the full range, and in charge of two funds. Charlet had been at SGAM since 2006, where he managed diversified and Total Return funds.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Morgan Stanley announced on Monday, 13 September that it has appointed Paul Price as head of international sales at Morgan Stanley Investment Management (MSIM). Price, based in London, will be in charge of international sales and sales through intermediaries, relations with consultants and business development teams in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Price was most recently global head of institutional activities at Pioneer Global Asset Management.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Money Marketing reports that the head of international bond management at Schroders, Nick Gartside, has decided to leave the firm after eight years of collaboration to join JPMorgan Asset Management. Bhupinder Bahra and Frederick Bourgouin will take over his responsibilities for several products, including the Schroder/Schroder ISF strategic bond fund, Schroder ISF Global bond, and Schroder ISF global inflation bond. Gartside will remain at Schroders until the end of the year, to facilitate the transfer of responsibilities.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Responsible Investor reports that the British management firm Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) has become one of the most recent signatories to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI). Assets under management at LGIM total about GBP320bn, or over EUR385bn.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The London borough of Wandsworth has awarded a mandate to Northern Trust to provide custody services on assets totalling USD1.2bn in its pension fund.

London-based CQS Capital Management, one of the world’s most prominent credit hedge fund managers, has launched a new fund - CQS Distressed Opportunities - to invest in the debt of troubled companies, says the Financial Times.

GAM launches GAM Star Absolute Global Emerging Markets, an emerging market equity long/short Ucits III fund. The new, daily dealing fund will invest in emerging markets with a particular focus on the core BRIC economies and ‘new BRIC’ markets including Turkey, GCC, Indonesia, Egypt and other African and ASEAN economies. GAM Star Absolute Global Emerging Markets will be managed by inhouse investment director, Sean Taylor, responsible for GAM’s emerging and frontier markets funds.The fund will be allocated across three core themes; structural and domestic plays, cyclical ideas and new emerging market opportunities.

L’évolution rapide de la part des dépenses allouées à l'innovation témoigne de l'engagement croissant des sociétés asiatiques

Si les rallongements de maturité sont les plus fréquents, l’excédent de liquidité pousse certaines entreprises à rembourser leurs dettes