« Le segment du high yield devrait être le plus performant en 2010 »
Michael Mewes, gérant crédit chez JPMorgan AM
« L’euro est nettement surévalué face au dollar »
Jean Fauconnier, gérant gestion absolue chez Groupama Asset Management
« Nous anticipons une hausse de 30 % des bénéfices par action du CAC 40 en 2010 »
Jean-François Virolle, directeur général de Global Equities AM
15/01/2010
BarclayHedge index posts increase of nearly one quarter in 2009
On the basis of results announced by BarclayHedge (the new name of Barclay Group) for 1,335 hedge funds as of 14 January, the average performance of these funds totalled 2.24% in December, bringing the total for the past year to 24.18%. One year previously, the 868 funds which had disclosed results as of 11 January 2009 showed average losses of 21.29%. As observed by other providers of statistics on alternative management, the convertibles arbitrage strategy has seen the largest gains, with 53.87% for 27 funds. Only one strategy shows losses for the year: equity short bias, with losses of 19.17% for 7 funds, and losses of 4.17% in December. The largest category, with 566 funds, is funds of hedge funds. This group shows average performance for 2009 of 10.44%. The 302 equity long/short funds gained 14.43%, while the 209 emerging markets funds gained 44.50%.
15/01/2010
13% of funds failed to keep up with inflation in 2009
Although, on average, securities funds on sale in Spain posted returns of 4.9%, in line with results for 2006, which was the best year since the 5% returns in 1999, 12.9% of all products produced gains which were lower than inflation, which, at 0.8%, was at its lowest levels since 1962, Cinco Días reports. According to statistics from the Inverco association, 6.8% of funds saw losses, among which, oddly, 18% were short-term bond funds, and 15.6% were “global” funds. At the other extreme, 8.5% of funds had returns of over 30%, and only 2.8% had returns of over 50%. The best performer was the ETF from BBVA replicating the FTSE Latibex Brasil, with 123.6%.
15/01/2010
Reyl AM recrute Raphael Kassin
Ayant quitté depuis désormais six mois Credit Suisse où il gérait un fonds obligataire marché émergents et dirigeait l'équipe dette émergente, Raphael Kassin a pu rejoindre jeudi Reyl Asset Management (2,5 milliards de francs suisses d’encours) comme head of emerging market debt. Selon das investment, Raphael Kassin sera responsable d’un fonds autorisé à monter en cas de besoin jusqu'à 100 % en numéraire.
15/01/2010
Lyxor predicts correlations between asset classes will diminish
Lyxor Asset Management (Société Générale) on Thursday held a conference in Madrid dedicated largely to hedge funds. Stefan Keller, a strategist at Lyxor, predicts that in 2010 there will be less systemic risk and more dispersion, which is to say, less correlation between various asset classes. This year, the Lyxor portfolio will be largely dedicated to emerging market credit to the detriment of equities. It will retain a less directional profile, and will prefer event-driven strategies to long/short.
15/01/2010
Natixis AM launches an emerging markets fund
Natixis Asset Management on 14 January announced the launch of the FCP Natixis Actions Global Emergents, which offers active management of country allocation for a universe of emerging markets equities. The Natixis Actions Glboal Emergents fund, denominated in Euros, will aim to achieve performance equal to or higher than its benchmark index, the MSCI Emerging Markets with net dividends reinvested, for a recommended minimal investment period of five years. The investment is aimed at all investors, including institutional, business, and retail clients.
15/01/2010
Strong net subscriptions to mutual funds and ETFs
In 2009, mutual funds in the United States posted net subscriptions of USD377.4bn, according to Morningstar, of which USD356.6bn went to bond funds, while US equities funds saw net redemptions of USD25.7bn, and global equities funds drew net subscriptions of USD25.5bn, after net outflows of USD70.4bn in 2008. Among the management firms which saw net redemptions were American Funds (USD25.5bn), Legg Mason/Western Asset, Putnam, Oppenheimer (USD2.5bn), Van Kampen, and Morgan Stanley. However, Vanguard and Pimco posted net subscriptions of USD94bn and USD82.7bn. ETFs finished the year with USD784.9bn in assets, compared with USD533.4bn at the end of 2008. About 40% of this increase was due to net subscriptions, while 60% was due to market effects. The SPDR Gold Shares fund, which saw USD11.2bn in net inflows last year, now has over USD40.2bn; it was by far the ETF with the largest net subscriptions.
15/01/2010
UBS continues to recruit in Asia
UBS Wealth Management has announced that Vinay Gandhi, who joined JP Morgan Private Bank in early November after leaving Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management, has been appointed managing director and country head India international Asia. He will be based in Singapore, and will report to Andreas Weber, regional market management of India Indochina and global investors APAC. At his two previous employers, Gandhi was in charge of wealth management for the Indian diaspora and the south Asian region. The Swiss group says that the recruitment of Gandhi follows the recent recruitments of Carlo Grigioni, vice chairman, wealth managment & Swiss bank, as head of ultra high net worth (UHNW), Asia Pacific, Daniel Harel as head of UHNW, South Asia, and Yeong Phich Fui and Kurt Kumschick as senior advisors UHNW South Asia, and of Reto Mark as managing director, UHNW country team head for South Asia.
15/01/2010
Colin Ng joins Barings
Baring Asset Management on Thursday announced the recruitment of Colin Ng to the newly-created position of head of Asian equities. He will report to Henry Chan, head of Asia Pacific investment. Ng will be in charge of the range of regional and country funds for Asia, excluding products focused on China. Ng left MFC Global Investment Management (Manulife group) in November. He was head of Asia Pacific Equities, and has recently been replaced in this position by Linda Csellak, who joined MFC Asia in Hong Kong in December. Until March 2009, she was director of Ballingal Investment Advisors, also based in Hong Kong, and was in charge of a Pacific long/short strategy. In her new position, she will report to Tahnoon Pasha, Asia head of investments, equities.
15/01/2010
LCF Rothschild achieves both prudence and performance
In 2009, a year of complex results for the firm, La Compagnie Financière Edmond de Rothschild (LCF Rothschild) was able to continue growth in assets, which increased overall by 14.8% to EUR33.7bn as of the end of December, with about half of this increase coming from market effects. The portfolio at the end of the year was 40.7% composed of equities, 15.1% of fixed-income products, 11.8% of structured management products, and 10.4% of diversified products. The private equity portion of the firm’s investment products represented 8.3% of the total, while alternative investment represented 7.7%, and convertible bonds accounted for 5.9%. The result, which has yet to be definitively and “very conservatively” tallied up in the next few days, says chairman of the board Michel Cicurel, will come out to “roughly half” at best of the EUR51m earned in 2008.
15/01/2010
Evergreen brand to disappear, replaced by Wells Fargo
The ranges of investment funds from Wells Fargo Funds Management (which advises the Wells Fargo Advantage Funds) and Evergreen Investment Management Company (which advises the Evergreen Funds) will be reprofiled through mergers, reorganisations and liquidations, resulting in the disappearance of the Evergreen brand, probably in the second half of this year. Evergreen (USD67.2bn as of the end of December) has been absorbed by Wells Fargo FM (USD179.1bn) since the acquisition of wachovia Corp by Wells Fargo at the end of 2008. In practice, pending the approval of shareholders (the baords of trustees have already unanimously approved the plans), the operation will result in the emergence of a unified range of 128 Wells Fargo Advantage Funds, variable trust funds and Wells Fargo Managed Account CoreBuilder Shares. 27 Evergreen funds will be “reorganised” to become new Wells Fargo Advantage Funds, while 53 mutual funds of the two product ranges will merge, and four Evergreen funds and one Wells Fargo Advantage Fund will be liquidated.
15/01/2010
Invesco merges four of its affiliates
Invesco Ltd has announced that as of 1 January, it has merged four of its affiliates, Invesco Aim Advisors, Invesco Aim Capital Management, Invesco Aim Private Asset Management and Invesco Global Asset Management, under the name Invesco Advisers. The simplification of the legal structures comes as the group constructs a global operating platform. Fund management teams for AIM funds will not be changed, and the service provided to clients will remain the same.
15/01/2010
OFI AM will soon obtain qualified investor status in China
Ofi Asset Management is about to obtain the status of qualified financial institutional investor (QFII) in China, the deputy CEO of OFI AM, Thierry Callault, stated on 14 January at an annual conference held by the asset management firm. The legal status will allow OFI to invest in equities funds on the A market, reserved for local actors. Haiyan Li-Labbé, an Asian markets analyst and manager at Ofi AM, says the Chinese market, which has reasonable valuation levels, is “a beta market but also an alpha market,” in which stock-picking is a productive activity.
15/01/2010
Lombard Odier seeks to diversify clients and products
In France, Lombard Odier is seeking to diversify its client base by winning over external distributors, who represent only 20% of institutional client assets in Paris, Agefi weekly reports. Institutional investors represent EUR2bn out of a total of EUR3.7bn managed by the Paris office. In terms of products, the Swiss bank is seeking to promote alternative management.
15/01/2010
RBC GAM recruits a former SGAM head to build an emerging markets team
RBC Global Asset Management (RBC GAM), the Canadian-based global investment manager and part of RBC Wealth Management, has announced the hires of Philippe Langham and Michael Joynson to its London team.Philippe Langham, who holds the position of portfolio manager, will be responsible for establishing and leading RBC GAM’s Emerging Markets equities team. He has been active in the investment management industry since 1992. Most recently, he was the head of Global Emerging Markets at Société Générale Asset Management (SGAM) in London, and prior to this, he was based in Zurich as head of Asia and Emerging Markets for Credit Suisse. Joynson joins RBC GAM as a senior member of the European Equities team. He has twenty years experience in the investment management industry and was most recently at Citigroup, where he was a director in Global Equity Strategy. Prior to this he was at Invesco Perpetual.
15/01/2010
Dutch pension fund results threatened by future AIFM directive
Les Echos reports that the future European AIFM directive, which is chiefly concerned with hedge funds, at this stage is in danger of cutting into the roughly EUR1.5bn per year of financial revenues for Dutch pension funds. This reduction would trigger a domino effect which could result in a 6% increase in retirement contributions for employees and businesses, the sector calculates. At present, the portfolio of retirement institutions in the Netherlands are 9% compoased of alternative investments. On average, these investments brought returns of about 8.84%, compared with 6.64% for equities or bond markets.
15/01/2010
Raphael Kassin launching a fund with Reyl AM
Raphael Kassin is making his return to fund management with a new Luxembourg-domiciled Ucits III product, six months after he left Credit Suisse, Citywire can reveal. The portfolio manager specialised in the emerging debt space is launching a new fund in partnership with Reyl Asset Management (RAM). He will start with up to USD50 million in seed capital.
15/01/2010
Number of fund subscribers down
In second half 2009, the number of subscribers to shares in equities and diversified funds fell by 3.5% compared with first half, to a total of EUR6.59m, compared with EUR6.89m, according to a study by NFO-Infratest for the Deutsche Aktien Institut (DAI). This decline of 241,000 investors follows an increase of 232,000 observed in January-June. 9.8% of the population holds shares in equities or diversified funds, which represents an increase of 185.6% or 4.3 million people compared with 1997, but a decrease of 32.5% or 3.2 million people compared with the record observed in 2001.
L'indice BarclayHedge affiche une hausse de près d'un quart pour 2009
Sur la base des résultats communiqués à BarclayHedge (nouveau nom de Barclay Group) par 1.335 hedge funds au 14 janvier, la performance moyenne de ces fonds est ressortie à 2,24 % pour décembre, ce qui porte le total pour l’année écoulée à 24,18 %. Un an auparavant, les 868 fonds ayant déclaré leurs résultats au 11 janvier 2009 faisaient état d’une perte moyenne de 21,29 %.Comme chez les autres fournisseurs de statistiques sur la gestion alternative, la stratégie d’arbitrage de convertibles est celle qui a affiché le gain le plus important, avec 53,87 % pour 27 fonds. Une seule stratégie est dans le rouge sur un an, equity short bias, avec une perte de 19,17 % (pour 7 fonds), dont 4,17 % pour décembre.La catégorie la plus nombreuse, avec 566 fonds, celle des fonds de hedge funds, affiche sur 2009 une performance moyenne de 10,44 %. Les 302 fonds equity long/short ont gagné 14,43 % et les 209 fonds marchés émergents se sont adjugé 44,50 %.
Raphael Kassin lance un fonds avec Reyl AM
Citywire révèle que Raphael Kassin fait son retour dans la gestion d’actifs, six mois après avoir quitté Credit Suisse, avec un nouveau fonds Ucits III basé à Luxembourg. Le gérant spécialisé dans la dette marchés émergents lance un fonds en partenariat avec Reyl Asset Management. Il commencera avec 50 millions de dollars de seed money.
15/01/2010
Colin Ng rejoint Barings
Baring Asset Management, a annoncé jeudi avoir recruté Colin Ng pour le poste nouvellement créé de head of Asian equities. Il sera subordonné à Henry Chan , head of Asia Pacific investment. Le nouvel arrivant sera responsable de la gamme de fonds régionaux et de fonds pays pour l’Asie, hormis ceux focalisés sur la Chine.Colin Ng a quitté MFC Global Investment Management (groupe Manulife) en novembre. Il y était head of Asia Pacific Equities et vient d'être remplacé à ce poste par Linda Csellak, qui a rejoint MFC Asie à Hong-Kong en décembre. Jusqu’en mars 2009, elle était director chez Ballingal Investment Advisors, également à Hong-Kong, avec la responsabilité d’une stratégie long-short Pacifique. Dans ses nouvelles fonctions, elle est subordonnée à Tahnoon Pasha, Asia head of investments, equities.
FvS obtient l'agrément pour cinq de ses fonds luxembourgeois
Le gestionnaire indépendant Flossbach & von Storch annonce jeudi avoir obtenu de la BaFin l’agrément de commercialisation en Allemagne pour quatre de ses fonds d’allocation d’actifs profilés (les FvS Strategie, Defensiv, Ausgewogen, Wachstum et Stiftung) et un fonds de performance absolue, le FvS Strategie Multiple Opportunities (géré par Bert Flossbach. Jusqu'à présent, ces produits n'étaient disponibles que dans le cadre d’un mandat de gestion de fortune. Les frais de gestion se situent à 1,25 % pour les fonds Defensiv, Ausgewogen (équilibré), Wachstum (dynamique) et à 0,40 % pour le Stiftung (destiné aux fondations. Pour le Multiple Opportunies, la commission de situe à 1 % mais FvS facture une commission de performance de 10 % (avec high watermark). Ce fonds a affiché pour 2009 une performance de 39,5 % (part R), battant ainsi son objectif de performance absolue fixé à 10 %.
15/01/2010
Reyl AM recrute Raphael Kassin
Ayant quitté depuis désormais six mois Credit Suisse où il gérait un fonds obligataire marché émergents et dirigeait l'équipe dette émergente, Raphael Kassin a pu rejoindre jeudi Reyl Asset Management (2,5 milliards de francs suisses d’encours) comme head of emerging market debt. Selon das investment, Raphael Kassin sera responsable d’un fonds autorisé à monter en cas de besoin jusqu'à 100 % en numéraire.
15/01/2010
RBC GAM recrute un ancien de SGAM pour monter une équipe marchés émergents
La société canadienne de gestion d’actifs RBC Global Asset Management (RBC GAM), qui fait partie de RBC Wealth Management, va créer une équipe actions marchés émergents à Londres.Pour cela, elle a recruté Philippe Langham, précédemment responsable de l'équipe marchés émergents mondiaux chez Société Générale Asset Management (SGAM) à Londres, qui sera chargé de monter et de diriger cette nouvelle équipe. Outre son expérience chez SGAM, il a aussi été patron de l’Asie et des marchés émergents pour Crédit Suisse. Par ailleurs, RBC GAM a aussi recruté Michael Joynson à Londres, en tant que membre senior de l'équipe actions européennes. Il travaillait auparavant chez Citigroup, où il était directeur dans la stratégie actions mondiales. Deux autres personnes seront recrutées à Londres dans les mois qui viennent, sachant que Jane Lesslie et Soo Boo Cheah, tous deux gérants de portefeuilles obligataires se sont récemment établis à Londres.
Les fonds de pension néerlandais redoutent la future directive AIFM
Selon Les Echos, la future directive européenne AIFM, concernant au premier chef les «hegde funds», risque à ce stade d’amputer les revenus financiers des fonds de pension néerlandais de quelque 1,5 milliard d’euros par an. Par un effet domino, ce manque à gagner pourrait se traduire par une augmentation de 6% des cotisations retraite versées par les salariés et les entreprises, calcule le secteur. A l’heure actuelle, le portefeuille des institutions de retraite des Pays-Bas se compose à hauteur de 9% d’investissements alternatifs. En moyenne, ces placements rapportent quelque 8,84%, contre 6,64% sur les marchés d’actions ou ceux des obligations.
15/01/2010
BC Partners veut lever 5,8 milliards d’euros
Selon Bloomberg, BC Partners envisage de lever quelque 5,8 milliards d’euros en 2010 dans le cadre d’opérations de LBO. Une première tentative depuis la chute de Lehman Brothers pour mesurer l’appétit des investisseurs. BC Partners a investi 70% de son précédent fonds de 5,8 milliards d’euros également levé en 2005.
15/01/2010
Invesco regroupe quatre des ses entités
Invesco Ltd a annoncé avoir fusionné au 1er janvier, sous le nom d’Invesco Advisers, quatre de ses filiales, Invesco Aim Advisors, Invesco Aim Capital Management, Invesco Aim Private Private Asset Management et Invesco Global Asset Management. Cette simplification des structures juridiques s’inscrit dans le cadre de la mise sur pied d’une plate-forme d’exploitation mondiale. Cela posé, les équipes de gestion des fonds AIM ne seront pas modifiées et le service rendu aux clients restera le même.
Fortes souscriptions nettes pour les mutual funds et les ETF
En 2009, les mutual funds aux Etats-Unis ont enregistré selon Morningstar des souscriptions nettes de 377,4 milliards de dollars, dont 356,6 milliards sont allés aux fonds obligataires, les fonds d’actions américaines accusant des remboursements nets de 25,7 milliards pendant que ceux d’actions internationales drainaient 25,5 milliards après avoir subi des sorties nettes de 70,4 milliards en 2008.Parmi les gestionnaires ayant supporté des remboursements nets figurent American Funds (25,5 milliards), Legg Mason/Western Asset, Putnam, Oppenheimer (2,5 milliards), Van Kampen et Morgan Stanley. En revanche, Vanguard et Pimco ont enregistré des souscriptions nettes de 94 milliards et de 82,7 milliards de dollars.Les ETF ont de leur côté terminé l’année avec 784,9 milliards de dollars d’encours contre 533,4 milliards fin 2008. Environ 40 % de cette hausse sont attribuables à des souscriptions nettes, tandis que 60 % le sont à l’effet de marché. Le SPDR Gold Shares, qui a engrangé 11,2 milliards de dollars de rentrées nettes l’an dernier et dépasse les 40,2 milliards d’encours, a été l’ETF qui a enregistré de loin les plus fortes souscriptions nettes.