Selon Les Echos, les dirigeants du Fonds stratégique d’investissement mis en place en janvier ont précisé hier leur doctrine. Ils entendent être très sélectifs dans leur aide aux entreprises et ne joueront les pompiers ni chez Caterpillar France, qui vient d"annoncer des suppressions d"emplois ni chez Bénéteau, dont les carnets ont fondu de moitié.

Selon Les Echos, la Compagnie Financière Edmond de Rothschild a enregistré l"an dernier un bénéfice net de 51 millions d’euros, en repli de près de moitié, avec des actifs sous gestion de 22,6 milliards d’euros, en recul de près d’un quart.

Crystal Finance, conseil en gestion de patrimoine indépendant spécialisé sur le segment des expatriés (330 millions d’euros d’encours, 90 conseillers dans le monde, 9.000 clients, 6,7 millions d’euros de Ca en 2008), a annoncé jeudi avoir l’intention de lancer cette année une plate-forme dédiée aux CGPI #pour un segment de clientèle ayant un profil de #mondiopolitains#, des Français qui résident en métropole, qu"ils soient d"anciens expatriés ou non, et qui ont une dimension internationale dans leur vie professionnelle ou privée#. Par ailleurs, les dirigeants de Crystal Finance, Bruno Narchal et Yves Martin, ont indiqué qu’ils comptent ouvrir des bureaux dans de nouveaux pays, ce qui devrait coïncider avec les projets de #développement dans certains pays ou zones économiques notamment le Moyen-Orient, l"Afrique ou l"Amérique du Nord#. Enfin, le cabinet se propose de créer cette année un département crédit spécifique et de développer la filiale Assinter, structure de distribution de produits de prévoyance et de retraite à l"international.

Dans un entretien au Temps, l"universitaire Rajna Gibson, pressentie pour accéder au directoire de la Banque nationale suisse, estime que «les établissements financiers doivent créer une vraie culture de la gestion du risque. Ils ne doivent pas considérer cette dernière comme une gêne, mais comme une opportunité de gagner de l"argent. C"est la gestion du risque qui permet de réduire les pertes.»

The Austrian banker Julius Meinl V, accused of fraud, abuse of confidence and abusive commission charges, has been conditionally released from prison on bail of EUR100m and the surrender of his British passport, Handelsblatt reports. The money posted for bail came from Meinl’s personal accounts and not from the bank. Meinl-Bank, a wealth management specialist, is accused of manipulating the share price of its affiliate Meinl European Land (MEL) to the detriment of investors. Investigations began nearly two years ago.

US federal prosecutors have filed their first criminal charges against a US client of UBS, Steven M. Rubinstein, following agreements with the bank, the Wall Street Journal reports. Rubinstein is accused of filing a false income tax declaration.

The new joint venture from Clessidra and Banca MPS in asset management will unveil its plans by the end of April, Il Sole - 24 Ore reports. The agreement was officially signed on Thursday. Clessidra Sgr indirectly acquired 67% of the Banca MPS companies in asset management (MPS Asset Managament Sgr and ABN Amro Asset Management Italy Sgr), while the remaining 33% will be retained by MPS. The new entity manages EUR20bn in assets.

The Children’s Investment Fund, a London-based hedge fund with Usd9.5bn in assets, is betting that the Japanese stock market will fall, and is taking up short positions on major companies in the country totalling more than USD1bn, the Financial Times reports. Among its short positions are Sony, Sharp, Olympus, Mizuho and Bridgestone.

Legg Mason has announced that it has paid off debts and modified its agreements with creditors, which has allowed it to sell the remaining USD49m in SIVs which had remained on its balance sheet since it removed all SIVs from its money market funds on 5 March 2009. The manager is expecting to receiev a tax credit due to these operations of about USD520m. When these transactions have been concluded, cash at Legg Mason will total USD1.5bn, of which USD600m are working capital. The manager will also re-report USD450m in tax rebates on its taxes this year.

The Netherlands-based management firm Robeco has scaled up its third-party distribution operations with the recruitment on 1 April of Bernd Riedel as director Third Party Key Accounts and director of the south German region. Riedel, who will report to Kai Röhrl, head of third party distribution for Germany at Robeco Deutschland, joins from UBS Global Asset Management, where he was in charge of banking and fund of funds clients within third-party distribution.

KanAm has announced that it has invested CHFR35.6m in the acquisition of the Holiday Inn Zürich Messe, a three-star hotel which was opened on 19 March 2009, which will be added to the portfolio of the institutional fund KanAm Spezial grundinvest. The property, which is the first investment in the hotel sector for the fund, is leased for 20 years to Holiday Inn (InterContinental Hotels Group).

Fabrice de Cholet on 24 March 2009 succeeded his brother Philippe de Cholet as vice president and deputy CEO of Cholet Dupont.Fabrice de Cholet has served as a portfolio manager at Cholet Dupont since 1988. He has also been head of institutional relations since 2000.?Philippe de Cholet will continue to actively participate in the development of the family group, and will take charge of development and communication,? says a press release.

From 1 April, Manish Bhatia, who joined Schroders in Hong Kong in September 2008 to replace Millicent Lai, and has since worked alongside Louisa Lo, director of Asian equities ex Japan, will be taking over responsibility for the Schroder ISF Indian Equity and Schroder ISF Pacific Equity funds. When he joined Schroders, Bhatia left Manulife Asset Management, where he managed Asian equities portfolios and country funds focused on India and Taiwan.

At the end of 2008, assets in equities and bonds managed on behalf of institutional investors totalled EUR344bn, a decline of 15% compared with June 2008, according to the latest statistics from Bfinance. Including money markets, delegated management in France represents EUR588bn, a 10% decrease in six months.The overall decline is, unsurprisingly, on the equities side, which has shrunk 25% to EUR162bn. The management firms which dominate the delegated management market (excluding group assets, captive assets, and life insurance) are all affiliates of major French banking groups. They are BNP Paribas IM (EUR85.2bn, up 7% in six months), Crédit Agricole AM (EUR77.6bn, -15%), Natixis AM (EUR73.9bn, -12%), SGAM (EUR43.8bn, -13%). The top 10, also include Lyxor, Axa IM, Allianz GI, CMC CIC AM, Groupama AM and La Banque Postale AM.Excluding money markets, actors are virtually the same, with the exception of OFI AM and Dexia AM, in ninth and tenth place. In the equities rankings, dominated by Lyxor, BNP Paribas and SGAM, are where actors differ slightly, with Comgest, BGI and State Street Global Advisors also in the top ten, with EUR4bn to EUR5.5bn each.Bfinance notes that foreign firms have maintained their market share at about 8-9%. The top 5 consists of Fortis IM, SSGA, BGI, Robeco and Credit Suisse AM.

Following equities SRI, Groupama Asset Management is moving into the management of socially responsible corporate bonds. In December, the management firm created an FCP to invest in debt from Euro zone companies, with an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) bias. ?The fund has two objectives: to be more virtuous and to perform better than its benchmark index, the Barclays Capital Euro Aggregate Credit Corporate,? says Philippe-Henri Burlisson, director of fixed income management at Groupama AM.To select the bonds in a way that integrates a ?responsible? dimension, Groupama AM has created a special method, based on a system of pluses and minuses for candidate issuers. ?Thus, the most virtuous issuers receive an expected performance bonus, while less virtuous issuers receive a negative adjustment of their expected performance,? explains Burlisson, adding that ?the system is determined by sector and by curve segment.?The plus/minus system leads to an adjustment of returns, on the basis of which the portfolio is constructed.The identification of the best and worst companies in terms of ESG is based on extra-financial research which has been undertaken by Groupama for several years, and which is oriented around three major areas: environmental, social, and governance issues.This plus/minus approach ?preserves access to all issuers on the rate curve,? explains Burlisson, which an exclusionary approach would not. The fund currently weighs EUR95m, out of a total of EUR24bn in credit bond management. Until 31 March, the fund was available only to founding members. Now, it will be made available to all types of clients. It may also be accessed from life insurance policies within the group.Following on this venture into corporate bonds, Groupama is planning to further extend its SRI coverage, and is considering government bonds in particular.

In 2008, the total volume of calls for tenders to select asset managers launched by French institutional investors fell 33% to EUR18.1bn, compared with EUR27bn (excluding overlay) in 2007, and EUR11bn in 2006, according to Bfinance.The number of operations has fallen back to 2004 levels, with eight calls for tenders for a total volume of EUR7.8bn. These represent 43% of the market, compared with 34% in 2007.

AllianceBernstein Holding LP and AllianceBernstein LP (in which Axa controls about 65.1%) on Thursday announced cost-saving measures which are resulting in a reduction in global personnel to about 4,760 as of the end of March, compared with 4,997 at the end of December, which corresponds to a reduction of about 4.7%. The number of investment professionals (analysts, portfolio managers, chief investment officers, directors of research and traders) has been reduced to 540 from 571. In third quarter, total staff is expected to shrink by a further 75 people, most of them staff members who are not investment professionals.Last year, assets at the management firm fell 42% to USD462bn as of the end of December. Of this USD338bn decline, USD292.4bn was due to market effects, and USD44.2bn to net redemptions.

The annual report from the Swiss Fund Association (SFA), published on Thursday, reveals that assets in funds included in statistics for the Swiss fund market were down at the end of December by 24.7% in one year to CHF452bn, of which CHF230.8bn were in Swiss-registered funds (+9%), putting these funds for the first time ahead of foreign-registered funds (CHF221.2bn). In total, net redemptions represented CHF6.3bn, while market effects had a negative impact of CHF142.2bn. The only two categories which registered net subscriptions are money market funds, with EUR30.4bn, and real estate funds, with EUR1.9bn, while bond funds showed the heaviest net outflows (EUR21bn).The SFA reports that as of the end of 2008, the number of funds and sub-funds which were licensed for general retail sale increased by 628 to total 6,423, including 1,299 Swiss-registered sub-funds and 5,124 foreign-registered products (of which 3,833 are Luxembourg-registered).

As of the end of 2008, assets under management at the Church Pension Group (CPG) were down to USD7.45bn from USD8.89bn twelve months earlier, largely due to falling equities markets. A 33% allocation to bonds has allowed the pension fund for the Episcopalian church to limit its losses somewhat, Global Pensions reports. In the past ten years, the fund has posted an average performance of 9.3%.

In its annual report for 2008, the Ethical Council for the Swedish public pension funds AP reports that thirteen companies remain on its watch list, IPE reports. Six of these are on the list exclusively due to environmental issues: Chevron Corporation (in Ecuador), Duke Energy Corporation (in the United States), Freeport-McMorran Copper & Gold (in Indonesia), Grupo Ferrovial (in Poland), PetroChina (in China), and Rio Tino (in Indonesia), while Vedanta Resources is on both lists due to environmental and human rights issues in India. AES Corp and Yahoo! are both accused of shortfalls in human rights in Panama and China, respectively. Three companies are on the list due to labour rights questions: Bridgestone in Liberia, Toyota Motor in the Philippines, and Wal-Mart Stores in the United States. Lastly, Thales is on the list due to corruption in South Africa.Last year, the Ethical Council removed Sodexo, BHP Billiton and the Nigerian affiliate of Chevron from the list due to improvements in their performance in 2007. L3 Communications was removed from the list since the AP funds decided to liquidate their participations in the firm due to violations of human rights in an Iraqi prison and due to the fact that two affiliates of the group are involved in the manufacture of cluster bombs.

In a market statement, The Children’s Investment Fund (TCI), led by Christopher Hohn, announced on Thursday that on 1 April it reduced its stake in Deutsche Börse from 10.06% to 0.96%.

Attendu sur la régulation, le sommet a agréablement surpris par les moyens donnés au FMI

Les dirigeants du G20 réunis aujourd’hui à Londres ont publié le communiqué suivant (en anglais)

Selon le Handelsblatt, BASF a l’intention de placer un emprunt de 500 millions d’euros sur trois ans et demi monté par Citigroup, Commerzbank et UniCredit. La Börsen-Zeitung croit savoir que l'émission sera en fait d’un milliard d’euros et qu’elle est destinée à refinancer en partie l’acquisition de Ciba.

Le président du directoire Wolfgang Klein a annoncé lors d’une conférence à Londres que la Deutsche Postbank a probablement été bénéficiaire au premier trimestre de cette année, parce qu’elle a été moins plombée que l’an dernier par les répercussions de la crise financière, rapporte la Börsen-Zeitung.

La saison des dividendes s’ouvre en Allemagne vendredi avec Merck et MAN et elle se terminera fin mai avec Salzgitter, indique la Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Au total, 28 des 30 sociétés du Dax vont distribuer plus de 20 milliards d’euros, presque 6 milliards de moins qu’en 2008. Avec leur exercice à cheval, ThyssenKrupp et Siemens ont déjà réparti plus de 2 milliards entre leurs actionnaires. Le rendement du dividende de Lufthansa, BASF, RWE et Deutsche Telekom dépasse les 8 %. Il ressort à 7 % pour Deutsche Post, E.On et K+S, et à 6 % pour MAN, Munich Ré, et Allianz. En moyenne, il s'établit à 5 %.

Vienna Insurance Group (Wiener Städtische) va émettre durant les prochaines semaines un emprunt hybride d’un montant maximal de 250 millions d’euros dont le principal souscripteur sera Erste Bank, rapporte le Handelsblatt. De son côté, la banque compte placer de bons de jouissance et Vienna Insurance a l’intention d’investir jusqu'à 200 millions d’euros dans cette opération. L’assureur a affiché pour 2008 un bénéfice avant impôt en hausse de 23 % à 540 millions d’euros. Il va servir un dividende de 1,10 euro contre 90 cents.

Mercredi, la compagnie pétrolière autrichienne a annoncé le lancement d’un emprunt obligataire international de 750 millions d’euros sur 5 ans assorti d’un coupon de 6,25 %. L'émission a été plusieurs fois sursouscrite et le spread par rapport aux midswaps s’inscrit à 370 points de base. Cette opération permet d’optimiser la structure des financements externes et d’augmenter l'échéance moyenne de la dette.

Le sauvetage par la Banque d’Espagne de la Caja Castilla-La Mancha (CCM) est une bonne nouvelle pour les quelque 60 fonds d’investissement espagnols qui détenaient fin décembre des titres participatifs de cette caisse d'épargne pour environ 325 millions d’euros, selon des chiffres de la CNMV relayés par Expansión. Beaucoup de ces fonds sont réputés être gérés de manière conservatrice, des produits obligataires et monétaires, notamment de la gamme BBVA Dinero. Expansión rappelle que, pour les affaires Lehman et Madoff, le nombre de fonds concernés a été de respectivement 129 et 39.

Après un exercice 2008 noir où l’encours a chuté de 30 %, les remboursements nets du premier trimestre pour les fonds distribués en Espagne se sont limité à 4,33 milliards d’euros (dont 1,59 milliard pour mars) contre 13,1 milliards pour janvier-mars de l’an dernier, souligne Cinco Días. Cela ne s’explique pas que par la remontée de la Bourse : les banques mettent moins de pression commerciale pour capter des dépôts au détriment des fonds. Selon Ahorro Corporación, la diminution de l’encours pourrait se limiter cette année à 15-20 %, à moins de 150 milliards d’euros fin décembre, contre 161,89 milliards fin mars.