Les gestions s’allègent toujours sur les valeurs financières et de consommation, pour se renforcer sur la santé et les télécoms

Henderson is about to sign off on an acquisition of the management firm New Star for GBP115m, the Financial Times reports. The newspaper states that about half of the 310 employees at New Star will be taken over by Henderson, including the manager Richard Pease. The founder of New Star, John Duffield, and Howard Covington, CEO of the asset management firm, will be leaving the company in March, once the acquisition has been completed.

After Allianz Global Investors, Cominvest, Pioneer and UBS, DWS (Deutsche Bank) and Union Investment (co-operative banks) have decided to liquidate their funds of hedge funds. The DWS fund, which will close on 1 May, has only EUR6m in assets, while the Union funds, liquidated on 1 January, lost 30% in 2008, twice as much as the sector average, Handelsblatt reports. The only remaining manager is Deka (savings banks), with a fund of hedge fund worth EUR93m. But db x-trackers, the specialised affiliate of Deutsche Bank, is planning to launch an ETF in February based on hedge fund indices.

Franklin Templeton on Thursday announced that it has received licenses to release five new funds in Germany and Austria. Two of them, the Templeton Frontier Markets Fund and the Templeton Asian Smaller Companies Fund, are managed by Mark Mobius. The first invests in ?frontier? countries of the Middle Easy, Africa, and central and eastern Europe, as well as in Latin America and Asia, such as Bahrain, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Vietnam. These countries have the same characteristics which have established the reputation of classic emerging nations, including strong economic growth. The second new fund concentrated on Asian companies with cap sizes of less than USD2bn.The third new product is the Franklin World Perspectives Fund, which combines portfolios managed by various teams at Franklin Templeton throughout the world, including emerging and frontier countries, in a single product. It is not a fund of funds, but is a sub-fund of the Luxembourg Sicav; its benchmark is the MSCI All Country World Plus Frontier Markets Index.Lastly, Franklin Templeton is offering the Franklin Euroland Core Fund, managed by Uwe Zöllner, on its new platform Franklin European Equity. The product is invested in equities of the Euro zone, like the Franklin Mutual Euroland Fund, managed by Philippe Brugère-Trelat, who since 2000 has also been manager of the Franklin Mutual European Fund, a product in the Mutual Series.

Sources cited by the Wall Street Journal say that two former CEOs of Merrill Lynch, Daniel Tully and David Komansky, as well as the head of the Merrill Lynch investment bank, Barry Friedberg, had personally invested in hedge funds exposed to Madoff managed by John ?Launny? Steffens, former head of brokerage at Merrill Lynch. Steffens in 2001 founded the fund of fund management firm Spring Mountain Capital with J. Ezra Merkin, one of the largest investors in Madoff. Spring Mountain invested in three Merkin funds (Ascot Partners LP, Gabriel Capital Corp., and Ariel Fund Ltd.) The most ironic part of the story is that Merrill Lynch, like Morgan Stanley, advised its clients not to invest in Madoff, since due diligence teams could not understand his opaque investment strategy.

In 2008, net profits at T. Rowe Price fell to USD490.8bn, from USD670.6m on revenues of USD2.12bn, compared with USD2.23bn. Assets as of the end of December contracted by 31%, to USD276.3bn. In fourth quarter, net profits fell 87% to USD24.3m. CEO James A.C. Kennedy, states that the pace of recruitments has slowed considerably and that new hires will be limited to genuinely strategic positions for investment professionals.

The wealth manager HWB Capital Management, based in Trier, has teamed up with the Luxembourg-based firm Alceda to launch the real estate fund of funds HWB Immobilien Portfolio Plus, which will be managed by the CEO of HWB, Willi Brand, Das Investment reports. The portfolio will include 20 positions throughout the world, selected by the same mathematical system used for equities, diversified and bond funds from HWB. Brand will aim for total annual returns of 5% to 7%.

The administrators of the defined-contribution pension scheme for the Royal Mail, which is expected to register 9,000 new members per year, have chosen Zurich Corporate Pensions as investment, administration and information services provider, Professional Pensions reports. Zurich will be responsible for providing white-label investment funds. The defined-contribution plan will accept its first contributions in April, while the defined-benefit plan was closed to new entrants on 31 March 2008.

The German private bank Lampe (Oetker group), which manages about EUR10bn, has announced that it has increased its stake in the Austrian firm DALE Investment Advisors, whose assets under management for 25 high net worth licents represent about EUR1bn. The amount of the transaction has not been disclosed. Lampe bought a minority stake in Lampe at the end of 2007 (see Newsmanagers of 14 December 2007). The objective with the new transaction is to strengthen the German bank’s presence in the management of large family fortunes, ethical investment, and alternative investment. In addition, Austria may serve as a base for an expansion into eastern Europe, says Stephan Schüller, chairman of the board of managing partners at Lampe.

SG Private Banking has announced the appointment of Guillaume Lejoindre as CEO of SG Private Banking for Switzerland. Since September 2008, he has been deputy CEO of the private bank.

The tax authorities of the Netherlands have officially admitted that they should not have withheld tax on dividends paid to tax-exempt organisations, such as pension funds based outside the Netherlands, but inside the European Union, Professional Pensions reports. The verdict, which came in a landmark case filed by the Strathclyde Pension Fund, which will be reimbursed the amounts withheld from it since 2003, will allow about 70 British pension fund clients of KPMG hope for reimbursement of about EUR100m in total. The Hague has admitted that its regulations in force before 2007 contravened EU law.

The British insurer Standard Life has announced that redemptions have been frozen for six of its funds specialised in commercial real estate, with total assets of GBP2.7bn, managed on behalf of 212,000 clients, including institutional investors. The suspension of redemptions for six months is intended to avoid fire sales of properties, IPE Real Estate reports. The funds concerned are the Pooled Property Fund (GBP514m, 867 institutional clients), the Property One Fund, the Pension Managed Property Fund, the Individual Property One Fund, the Property Investment Life Fund, and the Property Fund.

The Swiss management firm Optimal Investment Services (OIS), an affiliate of Santander, has decided to liquidate seven hedge funds which have confronted heavy redemption demands in the wake of the Madoff scandal. They are the Optimal Arbitrage, Optimal Multi-Strategy, Optimal European Opportunities, Optimal US Opportunities, Optimal Asian Opportunities, Optimal Global Opportunities, and Optimal Global Trading, Funds People reports.However, OIS will continue to manage the Optimal Latin America, Optimal Elite, and Optimal Structural Opportunities funds, as well as two single manager hedge funds, and discretionary and advising mandates.

Funds of funds from Bernd Greisinger, of Mainz, had an average exposure of 40% to Madoff, while Carat was exposed for 19%. The other big losers are the asset management firms AmpegaGerling, the Top Ten brokers’ network, and the wealth manager Sauerborn (UBS), the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports.According to a survey by the BVI association of management firms of its members, the amounts invested in European-registered funds implicated in the Madoff scandal represents about EUR220m.Greisinger states that his investors were often placed on a waiting list to subscribe to the Irish fund Thema, which would appear not to be coherent with the notion of a pyramid scheme.

On Thursday, the Swiss Funds Association (SFA) welcomed the passage by the Federal Council of Article 31 the Ordinance on Collective Capital Investments (OPCC), on 28 January, which adapts Swiss law to European legislation. The modification, which will come into force on 1 March 2009, will make regulations covering surveillance of collective capital investments compatible with European regulations.

The Pension Protection Fund (PPF) on Thursday announced the appointment of Alan Rubenstein, who was managing director of Leman Brothers and set up the pensions advisory group at that establishment, as the new CEO of the firm, replacing Partha Dasgupta, who in August announced his intention to leave the job. Rubinstein will begin in his new position on 1 April, while Dasgupta will remain at PPF as an advisor until the end of his term on 30 June.

Nordea Bank S.A. (Luxembourg) on Thursday announced that it has signed an agreement to take over the private management activities of Landsbanki Luxembourg S.A. The operation, which received permission from the Luxembourg market regulator, the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), on 7 January, follows the acquisition of the private management activities of Glitnir Bank Luxembourg at the end of October. ?Clients have now been informed, and the transfer of their assets into the custody of Nordea is underway,? says Nordea.

The British manager F&C Investments has announced that it has been granted a sales license in Spain for eleven new funds, which brings the range of funds available on the market to 22, Funds People reports. The new offerings include equities, bond, absolute returns and SRI funds.

According to Oliver Rüdel, director of research at oekom research, if Barack Obama keeps his campaign promises, the United States may gain several places in the global sustainability rankings. The country currently ranks 40th out of 50. Among the areas which are likely to raise the overall rating of US government bonds are the closure of the Guantanamo detention centre, the abolition of torture, withdrawal from Iraq, ratification of the Kyoto protocol, the development and use of sources of renewable energy, and investment in infrastructure.However, Rüdel is sceptical that the United States will succeed in catching up with the countries of Europe in terms of sustainability during Obama’s first term. Currently, the country ranks just ahead of Turkey (41st) and after Mexico (39th). The top places on the list belong to, in order, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Germany, while France is 11th and the United Kingdom is 18th.

The National Bank of Kuwait will reimburse USD50m to clients who lost money on investments in Madoff, the Financial Times reports. Other banks and management firms may follow NBK’s example, the newspaper estimates. Some sources report that Union Bancaire Privée is also considering financial compensation to its clients, who lost EUR700m in the fraud.

A spokesperson for Merrill Lynch has confirmed to Responsible Investor that Zoe Knight, who was senior director of SRI Research in London, will not be replaced following her departure. The firm nonetheless plans to maintain a sustainable development bias in its mainstream research in equities and bonds. The departure comes in addition to the closure of the SRI team at Citi, the discontinuation of ESG coverage at JPMorgan, and the end of corporate governance research at Deutsche Bank.

Le Temps reports that Guillaume Lejoindre has been appointed as head of Swiss activities at SG Private Banking, the private banking affiliate of Société Générale. Lejoindre, 57, spent most of his career at Indosuez. He arrived in Geneva in 1999, to lead private client activities for Crédit Agricole (Switzerland). According to the newspaper, Lejoindre wants to develop high-end services to high net worth families, in collaboration with Rockefeller Financial Services. These plans go hand in hand with a desire to ?develop the middle eastern client base.? At the end of 2007, the private bank of Société Générale managed more than CHF30bn in Switzerland. Its 2008 figures have not yet been audited.

According to VDOS, Funds People reports, net redemptions from funds on sale in Spain in January totalled EUR1.34bn, in addition to which there have been negative market effects of EUR606m, bringing total assets down by EUR1.946bn to EUR173.791bn. Long-term bond funds and international bond funds nonetheless posted net subscriptions of EUR122m and EUR32m, respectively.

According to statistics from the BIS, German banks had debts of USD295bn in offshore financial centres, of which USD114bn were in the Cayman Islands and USD52bn in Jersey, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. The exposure of British banks totalled USD516bn, of which USD190bn was in Hong Kong and USD90bn in the Cayman Islands. Japan and Switzerland, for their part, had debts on these islands of USD238bn and USD102bn, respectively.

According to calculations by IPE.com, ABP, PFZW, PMT and PME, the four largest pension funds in the Netherlands, posted a decrease in their assets of EUR71.6bn in one year (to a total of EUR291.9bn), and all now have coverage ratios of about 90%, instead of the required 105%.

In the past few days, the number of notifications to the Spanish regulator, the CNMV, that funds have lost more than 20% of their assets in a single day have increased considerably, Funds People notes. The two most spectacular were outflows of 68.3% on 8 January from the hedge fund Accurate Global Assets from Proxima Alfa, and of 54.1% on 31 December from the Copérnico fund from Banco Madrid Gestión. In traditional funds, the heaviest net redemptions were of more than 46% each from the Fondmapfre Diversificación from Mapfre Inversión (13 January) and the Seleción España from Espirito Santo Gestión (23 January).

Jeudi, la Swiss Funds Association SFA (SFA) s’est félicitée de l’adaptation au droit européen décidée le 28 janvier par le Conseil fédéral de l’article 31 de l’ordonnance sur les placements collectifs de capitaux (OPCC). La modification, qui entre en vigueur le 1er mars 2009, permettra de rendre eurocompatibles les réglementations relatives à la surveillance des placements collectifs de capitaux."Cette mesure contribue à repositionner la place financière suisse et à la promouvoir en tant que site de production de placements collectifs de capitaux suisses», avait indiqué le gouvernement. «Les investisseurs à leur tour tirent profit de la régulation eurocompatible des fonds suisses et du fait que l’admission d’OPCVM étrangers ne soit pas entravée par des modalités particulières suisses. Ils disposeront à l’avenir d’un choix étendu de produits suisses et étrangers», a souligné de son côté Matthäus Den Otter, directeur de la SFA.

SG Private Banking annonce la nomination de Guillaume Lejoindre au poste de directeur général de SG Private Banking en Suisse. Il y était depuis septembre 2008 directeur général délégué.

Selon l"Agefi, un projet de loi visant à interdire la négociation des credit default swaps dans le cas où les dettes sous-jacentes ne sont pas détenues par les investisseurs commence à circuler à Washington, ce qui, d"après certains professionnels, porterait un préjudice fatal au marché des CDS d'émetteurs uniques. Toutefois, «les stratégistes de BNP Paribas ne croient pas au vote du projet et le qualifient de «tactique de négociation», à l’heure où tous les régulateurs veulent resserrer leur contrôle sur les dérivés de crédit», explique le quotidien numérique.

Une série de modifications très attendues. Les trustees de l"IASC, la fondation en charge de la surveillance du concepteur des normes comptables internationales, l"IASB, vient d"adopter plusieurs amendements qualifiés d""importants» à la constitution de l"organisation. Ces mesures constituent une prise en compte des recommandations formulées par le G20. Dans un contexte d"internationalisation du référentiel comptable, «nous reconnaissons la nécessité du changement», souligne dans un communiqué le président des Trustees, Gerrit Zalm, qui estime que l"indépendance de l"IASB sera renforcée par la nouvelle architecture de gouvernance.C"est ainsi que les trustees eux-mêmes seront soumis à la surveillance d"un «monitoring board» d"autorités publiques. Cette instance devrait comprendre des responsables du Comité technique et du Comité des marchés émergents de l"Organisation internationale des commissions de valeurs (OICV ou IOSCO en anglais), de la Commission européenne et des gendarmes des Bourses japonaise et américaine (FSA et SEC). Le Comité de Bâle pourra siéger en tant qu"observateur attitré aux réunions du monitoring board qui devrait rencontrer les trustees au moins une fois par an, ou plus si nécessaire. Autre nouveauté, le nombre de membres du board de l"IASB doit passer de 14 à 16 d"ici à 2012, avec l"objectif de respecter des critères de diversité géographique. Les principaux critères d"éligibilité au board seront la compétence professionnelle et l"expérience pratique. Mais parallèlement, afin d"assurer la diversité géographique, quatre sièges du board seront réservés à la région Asie/Océanie, quatre à l"Europe, quatre à l"Amérique du Nord, un à l"Afrique, un à l"Amérique du Sud et deux resteront sans affectation précise avec toujours en ligne de mire l"équilibre géographique. Troisième grande décision, l"IASB aura désormais des relations plus suivies avec les investisseurs, regroupés au sein d"un conseil consultatif sur les normes reconstitué (SAC ou Standards Advisory Council qui existe déjà) dont la composition devrait être annoncée très prochainement.Indépendamment de ces modifications, l"IASB a décidé de rendre les normes accessibles gratuitement au public sur son site web, sans y adjoindre toutefois certains documents plus spécifiques comme les recommandations pour la mise en ?uvre des normes. Mais la volonté d’ouverture et de transparence est bien là...