L'euro bénéficie des espoirs d'une intervention crédible de la BCE
Les positions vendeuses sur la monnaie unique sont tombées à un équivalent de 21,2 milliards de dollars, leur plus bas niveau depuis décembre 2011
De nouveaux scénarios se profilent en 2013 pour l'économie mondiale
Les incertitudes pesant sur les trois principales économies mondiales ont un impact considérable sur le scénario central de croissance et d’inflation
La gestion en Europe reste trop fragmentée
Sur les 12.000 fonds transfrontières commercialisés en Europe, seulement 430 dépassent le millliard d’euros d’encours, relève Fitch, un handicap pour les sociétés de gestion. Ces fonds étendards sont l’apanage des acteurs anglo-saxons, sauf chez les spécialistes comme Carmignac.
Les fonds européens pèchent par leur petite taille
Seulement 3,5% des fonds paneuropéens affichent plus d'un milliard d'euros d'encours, selon Fitch. Les anglo-saxons tiennent la corde
Le marché du coton s’organise contre les fraudeurs
L’Association Internationale du Coton, qui regroupe les principaux traders mondiaux du marché qui pèse quelque 70 milliards de dollars, feraient pression pour renforcer le contrôle et les sanctions sur les opérateurs qui effectuent des transactions avec des firmes bannies du marché et mises sur «liste de défaut», selon le journal. Le marché souffre de nombreuses ruptures de contrats qui entrainent une forte volatilité des prix.
Les IPO à Hong Kong reprennent des couleurs
Pas moins de douze sociétés, dont le groupe chinois Huishan Dairy, Tenwow ou le coréen Basic House Global, devraient lever un montant total de 2,6 milliards de dollars lors d’introduction sur la Bourse de Hong Kong, selon le Hong Kong Economic Journal qui cite des documents bancaires. Huishan prévoit de lever 500 millions cette année et Basic House Global, 250 millions.
L'obligataire corporate devient cher
La baisse des rendements des obligations d’Etat tire ceux du compartiment corporate, inférieurs au rendement des actions sur la plupart des marchés.
Les obligations corporates sont confrontées à la baisse des rendements
La faiblesse des taux soutient l'obligataire d'entreprise mais les rendements déclinent et sont inférieurs à ceux des actions sur la plupart des marchés
La Bulgarie renonce à son projet d'entrer dans l'euro
Sofia a abandonné son projet d’adoption de l’euro en raison de la détérioration des conditions économiques en Europe, a indiqué Simeon Djankov, ministre des Finances du pays, au quotidien. La Bulgarie est l’un des Etats les moins endettés de l’Union et s’efforce de s’en tenir à une stricte discipline budgétaire pour ne pas fragiliser le lev, corrélé à l’euro. «En ce moment, je ne vois aucun avantage lié à une entrée dans la zone euro, que des coûts. C’est trop risqué pour nous et il y a une incertitude autour des règles et sur ce qu’elles seront d’ici un an ou deux», déclare Simeon Djankov qui anticipe une croissance du PIB bulgare d’environ 1,5% cette année.
Moody’s met en garde l’Union européenne
L’agence de notation a passé de stable à négative la perspective de la note Aaa qu’elle accorde à l’Union européenne, n’excluant pas de l’abaisser en cas de baisse des notes allemande, française, britannique et hollandaise. «La perspective négative sur la note à long terme de l’Union européenne reflète la perspective négative sur les notations Aaa des Etats membres qui contribuent fortement au budget européen : l’Allemagne, la France, le Royaume Uni et les Pays-Bas qui, réunis, représentent 45% des recettes budgétaires de l’UE», explique Moody’s. L’agence a abaissé le 23 juillet à négative la perspective de la note de l’Allemagne, des Pays-Bas et du Luxembourg, trois pays notés Aaa, et avait indiqué qu’elle réexaminerait à la fin du troisième trimestre le Aaa accordé à la France et à l’Autriche, déjà sous perspective négative. Le Aaa du Royaume-Uni est pour sa part sous perspective négative depuis décembre.
Gérard Roubach a quitté CM-CIC Asset Management
Président de CM-CIC Asset Management, Gérard Roubach a quitté la société de gestion le 30 juin dernier. Agé de 62 ans, le dirigeant dont le départ était d’ores et prévu en 2012 a fait valoir ses droits à la retraite. Il a été remplacé par Olivier Vaillant, un cadre entré dans le groupe depuis une dizaine d’années. Agé de 41 ans, le nouveau promu qui a effectué un passage à la Banque Transatlantique était en charge du développement de l'épargne financière au sein de l'établissement.
La BCE n'a pas racheté de dette la semaine passée
La Banque centrale européenne n’a pas activé son Programme pour les marchés de titres (SMP) la semaine dernière. Cela fait maintenant six mois que la BCE n’a pas eu recours à ce programme inauguré en mai 2010, et qui représente encore à ce jour un encours de 209 milliards d’euros de dette rachetée.
Les Etats-Unis soutiennent l’Egypte
Selon des sources concordantes, les Etats-Unis seraient proches d’un accord pour effacer environ un milliard de dollars de dette contractée par l’Egypte afin de soulager l’économie du pays. Il y a deux semaines, le nouveau président égyptien élu en juin, Mohammed Morsi, avait réclamé au FMI un prêt à faible taux de 4,8 milliards de dollars afin de combler les 25 milliards de déficit dans le budget du pays.
MutRé recherche plus de diversification sur l'immobilier et les obligations et souhaite déléguer sa gestion actions
Guillaume Chatelet, directeur financier, technique et des risques de MutRé dans un article paru dans Option Finance numéro 1186 : Nous allons augmenter dans un futur proche notre exposition à l’immobilier au détriment des convertibles et des obligations. Nous souhaitons encore diversifier ce portefeuille en termes géographique ou sectoriel. Notre objectif est encore d’accroître nos investissements en immobilier sans excéder une exposition supérieure à 15% de nos fonds propres. La part d’actions n’a quant à elle pas vocation à évoluer en exposition mais, au vu de la petite taille de la poche, nous passons d’une logique de titre détenus en direct vers une logique de fonds et de trackers afin d’obtenir un niveau de diversification optimal. Au sein de la poche obligations, nous réfléchissons à l’avenir de notre important portefeuille d’emprunts d'États de haute qualité, actuellement fortement en plus-value. Nous réfléchissons à nous diversifier par exemple vers d’autres formes de risque obligataire sur lesquelles nous sommes actuellement pas ou peu exposés, comme le high yield ou la dette émergente. Pour rappel, MutRé gère 250 millions d’euros d’actifs financiers dont 120 millions au titre de nos fonds propres. A la fin juillet 2012, l’allocation d’actifs se répartissait entre 69% d’obligations, 11% de convertibles, 7% d’actions, 4% d’immobilier et 9% de cash. Les investissements en actions et en obligations sont confiés à OFI Mandat. Par contre, MutRé gère en interne les investissements en immobilier et les opérations de trésorerie.
04/09/2012
SEB ImmoInvest portfolio lightened by four properties
SEB Asset Management on 3 September announced that it has sold four properties located in Düsseldorf, Berlin and Luxembourg for EUR51.8m from the portfolio of the open-ended real estate fund SEB ImmoInvest. The product must be liquidated by 30 April 2017 (see Newsmanagers of 9 May). The four properties were sold “on average” at their most recent expert valuation price.
04/09/2012
Ignis recuits a former OMAM manager
Ignis
Asset
Management
has hired
Simon
Cowan
as
Fund
Sales
Director.
He
will
be
responsible
for
wealth
manager
and
discretionary
accounts
within
London
and
will
report
to
Austin
McBride,
Head
of
UK
Retail.
Prior
to
joining
Ignis,
Simon
was
Regional
Sales
Manager
at
Old
Mutual
Asset
Managers
where
he
looked
after
multimanager,
global
bank,
private
bank
and
wealth
manager
accounts
in
London
and
the
Channel
Islands.
04/09/2012
Tough half for HSBC in Switzerland
The Swiss private banking unit of the HSBC group has reported profits for fits half of CHF188m, down 4.1% compared with the first six months of 2011, the news agency Bloomberg reports. The news agency points out that this development is due to redemptions from clients, but also to the various factors which are affecting HSBC in Switzerland, including the resignation of its CEO, Alexander Zeller, and theft of data, as well as, at group level, suspected tax fraud in the United States.
04/09/2012
Asset management firms lack flagship funds
In a highly competitive fund distribution market, the weight of a product makes all the difference, Fitch Ratings claims. With at least EUR1bn in assets, flagship funds are what European firms are missing to compete with their Anglo-American rivals, the ratings agency says in a recent study.On the cross-border fund distribution market (excluding money market funds), UK and US asset management firms lead the pack. Among the firms with the strongest concentration of flagship funds, Robeco is the only non-Anglo-American firm. M&G takes first place, with 34% and 11 flagship funds out of 30, followed by Pimco (29%), Vanguard (21%), BlackRock (19%) and Franklin Templeton, with 17% of funds on sale being of flagship size.At the other end of the extreme, Fitch says, European asset management firms have overly wide product ranges, with few or no flagship funds. Of the ten firms with the fewest funds weighing in at over EUR1bn, all are of continental European in origin, except HSBC. Paribas has 469 funds, but only 8 have over EUR1bn in assets.Only in the specialist asset management firm segment do we find flagship funds, on sale from European Firms such as Skagen, Carmignac Gestion, DNCA and Comgest.Having large funds has several advantages, says Fitch. Flagship funds allow for larger operational efficiency in the area of administration and reporting, for example. Managers who manage fewer funds also have less addministrative burden and can concentrate more on management and generating new ideas. Flagship funds are more visible in rankings and advertising, and are more easy to sell via promoters, Fitch notes. Front-end fees for investors may be higher, however. The complete study is available as an attachment.
04/09/2012
Schroders adds a fund to its GAIA platform
The Schroder UCITS-compliant platform GAIA (Global Alternative Investor Access, GBP1.42bn in assets as of the end of June) will in October add a new Schroders product which had previously been managed internally, the Schroder GAIA Global Macro Bond fund, which does not yet have a sales license for France. The product aims for gross annual outperformance of 800 basis points over Libor, using strategies on forex, government bonds and corporate bonds.The fund will be managed by the multi-sector fixed income team at Schroders (10 investment professionals and 7 European credit portfolio managers), led by Bob Jolly, who joined the British asset management firm in September 2011 as head of global macro.
04/09/2012
Nick Ford joins MAM Funds
The British fund management firm MAM Funds, listed on the AIM exchange, has recruited Nick Ford, previously of Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP), Fund Web reports. Ford will be joining MAM Funds as a manager of the asset class he has long been specialised in: US equities.
04/09/2012
Schroders adds to multi-asset class team
Matthew Joyce (ex Occam Asset Management) and Jingjing Cui (ex JPMorgan Asset Management) have been recruited as senior analysts in the multi-asset class team at Schroder Investment Management (Schroders), which has 90 members. They will report to Nicolaas Marais, head of multi-asset investments & portfolio solutions.
04/09/2012
Nine people leave SSgA in London
Nine senior partners have left the asset management activity of State Street Global Advisors in London, Financial News reports. They include Ben Clissord, who had been liability manager, Moira Gorman, head of relations with local authorities, and Vin Battacharjee, head of European intermediated activities.
04/09/2012
Man Group in partnership with Nomura
The British firm Man Group has signed a partnership agreement with Nomura to launch a bond hedge fund, Citywire reports.The Nomura Man Systematic Fixed Income fund is based on a strategy managed by the Systematic Strategies unit at Man, which tries to identify directional opportunities on swap, future and emerging and developed forex markets.
04/09/2012
LGIM recruits from WestLB Mellon AM
Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) has recruited Marion Stommel as head of the global credit division, Money Marketing reports. Stommel previously worked at WestLB Mellon Asset Management, where she was head of the credit team and international development of activities.
04/09/2012
Changing managers can be counter-productive
For institutional investors, changing managers after a period of underperformance of three years on average results in lower returns than those that would have been obtained by retaining an active manager or allocating the mandate to passive strategies, a Towers Watson study cited by the Financial Times finds. “The results and experience show that retaining an underperforming manager is more profitable than replacing him or her,” says Robin Penfold of Towers Watson. This year, pension funds may replace underperforming managers representing USD100bn in equity mandates.
04/09/2012
Investors have an appetite for Chinese equities and volatility
In the last week of August, investors made Chinese equities and volatility funds their top priorities. Volatility funds have posted subscriptions in the past few weeks totalling about USD1bn, according to statistics from EPFR Global. Emerging market equity funds absorbed fresh money for the fifth week running in late August, their longest inflow streak since the first quarter, with Asia ex-Japan equity funds absorbing the majority of the new money. Investors committed USD500 million to China Equity Funds during the week ending August 29. However, investors remained prudent about developed market equities, with net outflows of over USD1bn from European equity funds. Overall equity funds nonetheless absorbed USD2.1 billion and their first weekly inflow in four weeks. High yield bond funds continued to show inflows of over USD1bn in the week under review. Bond funds overall finished the week to 29 August with subscriptions totalling USD5.3bn, bringing net inflows since the beginning of the year to over USD270bn.
04/09/2012
Franklin Templeton is Ireland's biggest creditor
As of the end of June, funds from Franklin Templeton held Irish bonds totalling EUR6.1bn, according to figures by the Financial Times. The largest amount was in the name of the Templeton Global Bond fund, managed by Michael Hasenstab. The US asset management firm is the largest private creditor to Ireland.
04/09/2012
Axa Real Estate recruits a new head of investor relations
Axa Real Estate Managers, which manages over EUR42bn in real estate assets as of 30 June 2012, has recruited Dietrich Heidtmann as global head of investor relations and capital markets, following a decisino by Antoine Jozan, currently head of investor relations and marketing, to retire at the end of December 2012, after 12 years of service. Before joining Axa Real Estate, Heidtmann was managing director – capital markets at Grosvenor, where he was in charge of fundraising and investor relations activities for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and North America. He reports directly to Deborah Shire, global head of business development. He will also be a member of the board of directors at Axa Real Estate, and will be based in Paris. Heidtmann and Joan will work together until the end of this year, to ensure a smooth transition. Jozan will then continue to work part-time, retaining responsibility for investor relationships in Canada and the Middle East,
04/09/2012
Gérard Roubach leaves CM-CIC Asset Management
Gérard Roubach, who had been chairman of CM-CIC Asset Management, left the asset management firm on 30 June. Roubach, 62, whose departure had been slated for 2012, is retiring. He has been replaced by Olivier Vaillant, who has been an executive at the group for 10 years. Vaillant, 41, has also served at Banque Transatlantique as head of financial savings at the establishment.
04/09/2012
Asset management unit at La Banque Postale shows poor results for first half
In its half-yearly financial report, published on 31 August, La Banque Postale reported a decline in net banking proceeds from its asset management activities of nearly 12%, to EUR60m, compared with EUR68m one year earlier.The net banking proceeds for La Banque Postale Asset Mangement fell 2.8% to EUR45m, “Equity assets at LBPAM suffered from falling equity markets in second quarter, while money market mutual funds did well,” the bank notes. Inflows to the segment form institutional clients have brought assets under management to EUR128bn as of the end of June 2012, the bank says.Assets and inflows at Toqueville Finance were below expectations, which has resulted in a decline of EUR4m to EUR9m in net banking proceeds for Tocqueville compared with June 2011, the document states, adding that profits at Tocqueville are now 90% integrated into La Banque Postale, following the departure of former director Marc Tournier, who controlled 15% of the firm.Management mandate activities, for their part, are down, resulting in a decline in net banking proceeds at La Banque Postale Gestion Privée of EUR2m, to EUR8m. In the new future, this area of activity may see modifications to its perimeter. Les Echos newspaper reports on 25 July that La Banque Postale has been in talks with Crédit Mutuel Arkéa to acquire its private bank for high net worth private clients.Lastly, in its semiannual financial report, La Banque Postal claims that it has brought costs under control (-EUR7m), which has allowed the asset management sector to earn a stable net profit as a part of the group compared with first half 2011 of EUR17m.