Groupama Asset management has registered two socially responsible investment funds with the CNMV, the Euro Capital Durable (Euro zone equities) and the Credit Euro ISR (investment grade bonds), Funds People reports.

For EUR42m, Deka Immobilien Investment has acquired a logistical centre constructed on 84.400 square metres in Waalwijk, the Netherlands (Northern Brabant region), for its open-ended real estate fund Deka-ImmobilienFonds. The halls, with a total area of 55,000 square metres, are leased in their entirety to Syncreon Netherlands.

Due to a lack of regulation of derivative markets and an inflow of liquidity generated by governmental stimulus plans, another financial crisis is to be expected, says Mark Mobius, the star manager at Franklin Templeton, cited by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The guru estimates that political pressure on the part of investment banks and all those who make money on derivatives will prevent appropriate regulation of the market.

The President of the United States on Wednesday unveiled a draft of legislation which would require hedge funds with more than USD30m under management to register with the SEC, the Financial Times reports.

Regions Financial Corp has announced that it has received a ‘Wells notice’ that it faces fines for possible violations of federal securities regulations, the Wall Street Journal reports. The notice related to three bond funds managed by James Kelsoe at Morgan Asset Management, an affiliate of Morgan Keegan which is itself an affiliate of Regions Financial. The funds have lost an average of 59.5% in the 12 months to 30 April 2008. They were dragged down by their exposure to CDO and mortgages. Regions Financial states that the management of the funds has since been transferred to Hyperion Brookfield Asset Management.

In a statement, the international Managed Funds Association (MFA) has welcomed the conclusions of a working group on compensation systems in Europe and the United States ((«Report to the Supervisors of the Major OTC Derivatives Dealers on the Proposals of Centralized CDS Clearing Solutions for the Segregation and Portability of Customer CDS Positions and Related Margin»). According to Richard H. Baker, President and CEO of the association, “the efforts of the working group and the report are both complete and welcome in terms of the calendar. The MFA is highly favourable to segregation of collateral, the portability of positions and direct and indirect buy-side access to centralised compensation. We are still prepared to collaborate with market regulators, industry working groups and other professional associations to determine the next steps to be taken to provide these solutions.”

RBC Dexia Investor Services has announced that it has been selected by Cougar Global Investments to provide international custody services. Cougar offers investment advising services to high net worth private investors, trusts, and businesses in Canada, the Untied States, and Europe.

The German financial stabilisation fund SoFFin and the German federal government estimate that the problems at the Sal. Oppenheim private bank are no longer as serious as in the recent past, according to Handelsblatt. The regulatory authorities consequently estimate that there is no need to take immediate action. They will continue to closely monitor the bank’s financial situation. The market is expecting a capital increase. The other two options, an entry into the bank’s capital of a strategic partner or the sale of BHF-Bank, were dismissed a few days ago by the bank’s directors.

As its Italian parent company Mediolanum is already doing, the Spanish firm Fibanc-Mediolanum will outsource the management of a good part of its locally-registered funds (EUR550m in assets) to Tre Capital Partners, which belongs to its founder and president Carlos Tusquets, ABC reports, relayed by Funds People. Currently, the funds are managed by GesFibanc, which will transfer six of its partners to Trea (whose management team has nine members). GesFibanc will retain its brand name and the funds under their current names.

The Swiss financial group Syz & Co has bought a 50% stake in the asset management firm of the Spanish N+1 group to create a joint venture with assets of EUR245m, which manages 20 Sicavs or mandates and two investment funds. In addition, Cinco Días reports, the new entity, N+1 SYZ Gestión, advises two hedge fund management firms.

Alastair Seymour, head of Henderson for the Iberian peninsula, says that Henderson New Star has begun the process to register its product range with the Portuguese securities commission, the CMVM, Funds People reports. The British management firm is planning to set up an office in Portugal by the end of summer, in order to attack the Latin American markets in fourth quarter.

Banque Sarasin has been offering the Sarasin Sustainable Equity – Real Estate Global since 10 July. The product is “the first fund in the world to invest in shares in sustainable real estate firms,” claims the Swiss firm. The Luxembourg-registered product (LU 0288928376) is in fact a new version of the Sarasin Real Estate Equity - IIID (EUR), which has been reoriented. The widely diversified fund invests worldwide according to social and environmental criteria, in publicly-traded firms of the real estate sector and closed real estate funds.The Sarasin Sustainable Equity - Real Estate Global, managed by Jake Ferguson of Sarasin & Partners, combines the expertise of analysis and sustainability specialists at Sarasin Sustainable Investment in Basel with the experience of real estate experts at Sarasin & Partners in London. The latter firm has been managing real estate investments since 1994 and as of 10 July 2009 administered CHF364m in this sector.

The Credit Suisse/Tremont index of more than 5,000 hedge funds worldwide shows performance in June of 0.43%, following gains of 4.06% the previous month. This brings performance in first half to 7.18%.Only two strategies remain in the red for January-June: dedicated short bias, with losses of 10.81%, and managed futures, which have lost 7.43%. Meanwhile, four strategies show gains of over 10% in the first ten months of the year: fixed income arbitrage, with returns of 11.82%, multi-strategies (12.29%), emerging markets (13.21%), and convertible arbitrage (23.95%).Oliver Schupp, chairman of Credit Suisse Index, says 87% of gains realised since the beginning of the year were made in second quarter.

Das Investment reports that the British management firm Gartmore Asset Management will close the US Smaller Companies fund on 13 August. The director of the strategy, Steve Jenner, says that demand has collapsed and that the fund is no longer profitable. It will be merged into the US Growth Funds, which manages assets of GBP137m.

Currently, there are 657 ETF funds on sale in Europe, and this number is expected to reach 1,000 by next year. There is an anarchic proliferation of products underway, and the heads of iShares Germany (Dirk Klee) and ETFlab (Andreas Fehrenbach) are concerned that the market will suffer the same fate as the certificate market, which imploded after the spectacular collapse of Lehman, Die Welt reports. Thorsten Michalik, head of x-trackers (Deutsche Bank) does not share this pessimism, due to the fact that certificates were sold by advisors at banks, who earned high commissions on them. This is not the case for ETFs, which advisors are thus not promoting. Retail investors who buy into the products themselves will not go in search of incomprehensible products such as the DJ EuroStoxx 50 BuyWrite ETF, which combines an investment in the DJ Euro Stoxx 50 with the sale of a call on the same index.Die Welt also reports that db x-trackers is planning to extend its range of ETFs to 200 products next year, up from 113 currently.

According to Lipper FMI, net subscriptions for European funds reached EUR32.1bn in May, which is the highest inflow since October 2007, Handelsblatt reports. The main contributors to these inflows have been equity funds, with EUR16.2bn, and corporate bond funds with EUR8.9bn, their best mark over the last four years.Diana Mackay, who is head of Lipper FMI, expects net inflows to reach EUR80-100bn this year, but warns that any bad news could jeopardize this projection.

Nearly 90% (to be precise, 88%) of 7,400 defined-benefit pension programs in the UK are in the red, at a time when the markets continue to be under pressure. According to the most recent statistics from the Pension Protection Fund (PPF), the coverage deficit for British pension funds at the end of June totalled GBP200.1bn (compared with GBP179.3bn at the end of May), while in June 2007, the balance of assets against liabilities was positive by more than GBP100bn. In June 2008, pension funds still had a positive balance of GBP13bn.In this environment, many firms are shutting down plans which offer defined benefits and are instead offering far less generous programs to new employees. According to the PPF, the total positive balance for programs with a surplus has fallen to GBP15.7bn, from GBP17.5bn in May 2009, while the cumulative deficit for programs with a negative balance totals GBP215.8bn, compared with GBP196.8bn at the end of May.

Independent asset management firm RWC Partners (USD2.3bn in assets) announced on Wednesday that it is planning to launch the Luxembourg-registered fund RWC US Absolute Alpha in October. It is a long/short product that complies with the UCITS III directive, and will be managed in London by Mike Corcell, who has joined RWC recently after managing the American Crescendo funds at Threadneedle. The new fund, which is awaiting a license from the CSSF, will be focused on US equities, with the objective of generating high returns with low correlation to the direction of the markets, and of managing the risk of a decline in all market configurations.RWC Partners is planning to release the fund, with daily liquidity, throughout Europe. The fund will have tax-optimised share classes for German and British investors, and will offer share classes which are completely hedged for currency risks in Euros, US dollars, pounds Sterling and Swiss francs.

Land Securities Plc ont Wednesday announced it is looking for investment opportunities and that it plans to launch two major developments in the West End of London next year, The Wall Street Journal reports. The biggest UK REIT said it experiences an increased investor demande for first and midquality properties.

After the announcement on 24 March of the recruitment of the European bond team from Ilex Asset Management, Liontrust Asset Management has recruited Ross Hollyman from GAM from 1 January 2010 (see NewsManagers of 23 June). Now, it has been learned that Hollyman will join the equities team at GAM, composed of Nikki Martin, Rob Cornish and Tom Ayres, who arrive in October.

Les opérateurs anglo-saxons, ayant massivement recours à l’effet de levier, se sont retirés

En conséquence, l’offre de bureaux augmente fortement dans la capitale et les valeurs locatives baissent

Les fonds souverains pourraient délaisser les titres du Trésor américain pour donner la préférence aux actions et à la gestion alternative. C’est en tout cas l’opinion de 56% des 146 gérants qui travaillent régulièrement avec les souverains et qui estiment que leur allocation actions devrait prendre du poids au cours des cinq prochaines années, selon une enquête réalisée le Oxford University Center for Employment, Work and Finance («Analyzing SWFs Through Proxy : The Oxford Survey of SWF Asset Managers») co-sponsorisée par Pensions & Investments.L’immobilier pourrait également occuper une plus grande part de l’allocation des souverains pour 53% des gérants interrogés. Les perspectives sont moins encourageants pour le private equity, 42% de l'échantillon estimant que la poche dédiée au capital investissement pourrait augmenter et 27% affirmant même qu’elle pourrait diminuer au cours des cinq prochaines années. A noter toutefois que selon 72% des répondants, la croissance des fonds souverains a jusqu’ici surtout profité au private equity. Ces classes d’actifs ne seront pas les seules à bénéficier du moindre intérêt des investisseurs souverains dans les titres du Trésor américain. Les fonds souverains accordent de plus en plus de mandats sur des obligations d’entreprises, des MBS ou encore des obligations à haut rendement. Du côté des perdants, l’obligataire et les hedge funds seront les classes d’actifs les plus affectées, selon 43% et 42% respectivement des gérants interrogés. Et les trois quarts de l'échantillon estiment que les fonds souverains devraient réduire leur exposition aux obligations du Trésor US. Selon State Street, l’encours des actifs des fonds souverains pourrait s'établir dans une fourchette comprise entre 4.850 milliards de dollars et 6.930 milliards de dollars d’ici à 2012, en fonction notamment de l'évolution des prix du pétrole. Dans tous les cas de figure, une modification de leur allocation de quelques points pourrait se traduire par des transferts de centaines de milliards de dollars.

Selon Absolute Return, les hedge funds n’ont gagné que 0,4 % en juin, sur la base de 43 % de l'échantillon habituel, et la performance du premier semestre serait ressortie à 6,33 % contre une perte de 12 % en janvier-juin 2008, rapporte Hedge Week. Le meilleur résultat est affiché par la stratégie arbitrage de convertibles, avec une performance de 21 %.

Selon Les Echos, la division «grands risques» d’AGF sera prochainement rattachée à celle de sa maison mère Allianz, AGCS, dédiée aux risques industriels, maritimes, aériens et spatiaux au niveau mondial. Cette filiale, qui affichait 2,9 milliards d’euros de chiffre d’affaires en 2008, se positionne comme «l’un des deux ou trois leaders» mondiaux sur ce marché. En France, les branches d’assurance de grands risques d’AGF (dommages, responsabilité civile, lignes financières, marine, aviation, risques techniques) passeront sous la bannière AGCS en octobre, et seront fusionnées avec les activités marine et aviation France, déjà logées dans la filiale française d’AGCS.

Selon les calculs d’IPE, l’encours des 400 principaux gestionnaires d’actifs mondiaux se situait fin décembre à 26,5 billions d’euros, ce qui représente une chute de 21,8 % en un an. Pour les 120 grands gestionnaires institutionnels européens, la contraction a été dans le même temps de 20,7 % à 4,6 billions d’euros.Vingt-huit des gestionnaires institutionnels européens ont perdu entre 0 et 20 % de leurs actifs sous gestion par rapport à fin 2007, tandis que 36 ont perdu entre 20 et 40 % et que 13 ont perdu plus de 40 %.Seuls 16 d’entre eux ont affiché une hausse de leurs encours, UFG se classant premier, avec un bond en avant de 79,3 % à 5 milliards d’euros, devant Pimco (Allianz), dont l’encours a gonflé à 103,9 milliards d’euros contre 59,5 milliards. DB Advisors (Deutsche Bank) s’est classé second par l’ampleur de l’augmentation, avec un accroissement de 5 milliards d’euros ou de 3,9 %. Deux autres groupes ont enregistré une augmentation de leurs actifs sous gestion supérieure à 2 milliards d’euros : le suisse Vontobel, dont l’encours a conflé de 2,9 milliards d’euros ou de 65 % pour atteindre 10,2 milliards d’euros en fin d’année, et Putnam, dont les encours institutionnels ont augmenté de 35 % ou de 2,6 milliards d’euros à 6,4 milliards.En revanche, BlackRock et Barclays Global Investors (BGI) ont accusé un plongeon de plus de 91milliards d’euros mais ils arrivent ensemble à 363 milliards d’euros gérés pour le compte d’investisseurs institutionnels, derrière toutefois Crédit Agricole Asset Management/SGAM, qui - pris dans leur globalité - se seraient classés en tête avec 439,2 milliards d’euros fin 2008.

L’association FVPK des 19 caisses de retraite autrichiennes (11,5 milliards d’euros d’encours, 560.000 adhérents) a indiqué que, malgré une perte de 1,04 % pour janvier-mars, le premier semestre s’est terminé avec une performance moyenne de 2,7 %, le deuxième trimestre ayant produit un gain de 3,74 %.Sur l’ensemble de 2008, la perte moyenne avait été de 12,94 %, la performance de long terme depuis 1997 se situant à 2 % par an.

Le mandat de gestion des deux principaux hedge funds du Santander victimes de l’escroquerie Madoff, le Banif Fairfield Impala et le Banif Optimal Low Volatility, a été retiré à Fairfield et Optimal pour être confié à Allfunds Alternative, une filiale commune d’Allfunds Bank (Santander et Intesa Sanpaolo) et de Goldman Sachs, rapporte Expansión. L’Impala devient le Select Global Managers et le Low Volatility prend le nom de Manager Alpha Series.Allfunds Alternative gérait déjà le troisième hedge fund commercialisé par Banif (la banque privée du Santander), le Banif Allfunds Springbuck, qui n’a pas été affecté par le scandale Madoff et qui a surperformé les deux fonds «madoffés».

Le Lyxor ETF Ibex 35 Inverso sera admis à la négociation sur la Bourse espagnole le 16 juillet, rapporte Funds People. Ce produit, au format OPCVM III, réplique l’indice inversé Ibex 35 Inverso, qui est le miroir du Ibex 35 con dividendos. La commission de gestion sera de 0,40 %.

Edmond de Rothschild Investment Managers (EDRIM) met la dernière main à l’ouverture d’une succursale à Madrid, qui interviendra lorsque toutes les autorisations nécessaires auront été obtenues, rapporte Funds People. Sébastien Senegas et María García Fernández seront chargés de la clientèle institutionnelle. Le premier, nommé directeur, vient du siège parisien, d’où il desservait le marché espagnol. La seconde occupait les fonctions de directrice des ventes institutionnelle chez Selinca.Le groupe a par ailleurs demandé l’enregistrement de sa gamme de fonds par la CNMV.