The New York-based Global X Funds (USD1.4bn in assets as of the end of October) has announced the launch of an ETF fund based on the Nasdaq 500, where its acronym is QQQV, and a small caps product based on the Nasdaq 400, under the acronym QQQM. These are the first products to replicate the new indices of the Nasdaq market.The Global X NASDAQ 500 ETF (US37950E3909) charges 0.48%, as does the Global X NASDAQ 400 Mid Cap ETF (US37950E3826).

The Bank of Spain has auctioned off Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo (CAM) to Banco Sabadell. In the area of asset management, the merger will allow Sabadell Inversión to overtake Ibercaja Gestión, to become the seventh-largest Spanish actor, once it has absorbed Gestimed, the asset management affiliate of CAM, Cinco Días reports.As of the end of October, Bansabell Inversión had assets of EUR4.326bn, while assets under management at Gestimed totalled EUR483m. This adds up to a total of about EUR4.8bn, compared with EUR4.425bn for Ibercaja Gestión.

Several UK pension funds have filed a lawsuit against Henderson Global Investors, over its decision to acquire the infrastructure group John Laing in 2006 for its PFI Secondary Fund II, IPE.com reports. The pension funds, which invested in the fund, claim that the deal exposed them to unexpected liabilities (including the John Laing pension deficit), which resulted in a 66% fall in the value of PFI Secondary.

The Massachusetts state pension fund, which manages about USD48bn in assets, has selected ten hedge fund managers for a series of mandates representing a total of USD245m in assets, Reuters reports.Among the managers selected are Jonathan Jacobson of Highfields Capital, William Ackman at Pershing Square Capital Management, and Yan Yuo at Capula Investment Management, who will each have an allocation of USD25m to manage. Also on the list are Brigade Capital, Davidson Kempner Capital Management, Indus Capital Partners, Samlyn Capital and Winton Capital Management.Following the example of many pension funds, Massachusetts had previously relied on funds of funds to select managers and manage investments.In 2011, the state pension fund earned returns of 2%, with significant contributions from private equity and real estate. Investments in hedge funds made a loss of 2.18%.

According to information obtained by Newsmanagers, the asset management firm Ossiam has submitted a license application to a foreign regulator to be permitted to launch a physical replication ETF, whereas hitherto its range has been composed entirely of physical replication ETFs.

The banking group BSI, based in Ticino in Switzerland and owned by Generali, has been issued with a banking license by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Agefi Switzerland reports.The group will also be permitted to fully exercise private banking activities and to offer clients a full range of banking and investment products.The license is a major step in the expansion of BSI in Asia, where activities have strongly contributed to net inflows of CHF2.9bn for the bank in second half.

“In 2012, two themes will dominate. On the one hand, preservation of capital, taking into account not only risks and returns, but also liquidity. On the other, the search for returns in an environment of low interest rates,” Pascal Blanqué, chief investment officer at the Amundi group, explained on Wednesday at an end-of-year strategy presentation.In the present situation, in which the «appeasement» scenario (65%) predicts that the euro zone crisis will ease, Amundi’s portfolios show relatively high caution. Overall, they are “long on cash and underweight in risk assets such as emerging markets, credit, and equities,” says Philippe Thurbide, director of research.Naturally, these points need to be more finely nuanced to apply to specific products. Romain Boscher, CIO for equity, plans to capture potential growth in emerging markets via businesses with strong exposure to these markets.It is also a time “to adopt assymetrical strategies in order to profit from market fluctuations off of a trend which is not necessarily an upward trend.” The manager is favouring minimum variance strategies, smart equities indices, and deep value. Portfolios are underweight in financials, and are confident in commodities, agriculture, and energy.Eric Brard, global head of fixed income, says that “the priority is to shelter assets, not to earn returns.” So far, Amundi has significantly reduced its portfolios of debt from peripheral European countries, and moved assets to AAA-rated euro zone debt; the asset management firm has also diverisified its portfolios into corporate credit, a process which will continue in 2012. Amundi is preferring investment-grade credit to government bonds, is diversifying internationally, and is taking an interest in convertibles.

For an undisclosed amount, First Solar Inc has sold its Topaz solar power facility in San Luis Obispo county, California, to MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co, an affiliate of Berkshire Hathaway, the Wall Street Journal reports.The value of the asset is estimated by the two partners at “over USD2bn.”The transaction marks the first venture for the portfolio management firm controlled by Warren Buffett into the area of solar energy. The firm had previously only operated wind farms and traditional power plants.

The asset management firm Atria Capital Partenaires yesterday announced to its investors that it is merging with Naxicap Partners, an affiliate of Natixis, Agefi reports, after announcing the operation on its website yesterday.Altria CP has seen several departures recently, and earlier this year was publicly reprimanded over a case that was ultimately settled out of court, brought by the wealth management firm Massena Patners, one of its investors. Fundraising for the next vehicle would logically have been more difficult.According to a source familiar with the matter, five professionals will be joining Naxicap Partners, and will take over management of the investments of the three Atria funds.

37 businesses listed in Paris, including EADS and STMicroelectronics, have no women on their boards of directors, eleven months after the passage of the Zimmermann-Copé law, which sets a quota of 40% on women on the governance bodies of listed companies, Les Echos reports. They have until mid-2012 to correct the shortfall. As a result, any appointment of male directors may be off the agenda.

The Wall Street Journal has established through an analysis of 154 quarterly filings to the SEC that since the beginning of this year, 50 money managers have been authorised not to declare the existence of stakes in companies, on the grounds that, in the regulator’s opinion, such a declaration might have caused “substantial harm” to their competitive position.The list of those with undeclared assets includes Warren Buffett (whose stake in IBM was declared in November, though the first purchases of shares began in March), and Deutsche Bank, as well as activist investors such as Carl Icahn and Nelson Peltz, and a number of hedge funds. The newspaper cites funds such as Relational Investors and HBK Investments.

At a presentation organised by the Club Tocqueville in partnership with Ossiam on ETFs, entitled “Do UCITS-compliant funds present a risk to the financial system and to savings investors?”, Pierre Bollon, director general of the French asset management association (AFG), sought to identify the element that differentiates synthetic and physical replication ETFs, an emblematic debate which calls for more global consideration.He identified several risks, including the risk of what he called “confusionism,” due to the common intermixing of ETP, ETF and ETN products. “We need transparency,” he claimed, “but also clarity. Adding information doesn’t always provide the necessary clarity.” In terms of transparency, the director also noted that the lower the tracking error on an ETF is, the better it is. From this point of view, synthetic ETFs are the best, he says. The AFG director says that a fourth risk is naïve optimism. Bollon was also critical of the role of various regulators worldwide, whose primary goal is to defend the financial systems in their respective countries.Patrick Artus, a member of the economic analysis council that reports to the French prime minister, picked up on this last ideas, pointing out that Basel III, for example, was a rule that would not affect US and Asian banking establishments, for example.Thierry Francq, secretary general of the AMF, gave the key another turn with the observation that for securities lending and borrowing, the rules currently in force were very different from one country to another, but that this problem is not unique to this topic. “There are other examples,” he says. In France, for example, depositories are subject to tough rules, but this is not the case in some other countries. In the Anglo-American countries, he said, regulations are more favourable to the intermediary than in France, which is more careful to protect the interests of the investor.

Patrick Evershed and New Star have reached a confidential settlement out of court to end legal proceedings filed by the fund manager for unfair dismissal, Investment Week reports. Evershed had been seeking GBP1bn from his former employer, New Star, which is now controlled by Henderson, on the grounds that he was bullied by the founder, John Duffield.

Fitch Ratings on December 7th announced it has upgraded Lombard Odier Investment Managers’ (LOIM, USD42bn in AUM at end-September) Asset Manager rating to ‘M2-' from ‘M3' for its fund of hedge funds (FoHF) and alternative beta replication activities. These operations which have USD1.3bn under management and employ 13 investment professionals in Geneva.This upgrade reflects the completion of the FoHF business major restructuring around the Managed Account Platform (MAP), stabilisation of investment teams, resolution of the 2008 crisis legacy issues, re-engineering of portfolio construction process and enhancement of the technological platform. In the medium term, a key challenge for LOIM will be to expand the MAP and accelerate fund raising to reach critical mass. Another related challenge is to developed services in the areas of advisory, customisation and communication.

Valartis Group (Valartis) has decided to sell its credit card business, Valartis Bonus Card, to Cornèr Bank, and to focus its efforts on continuing to develop its private banking activities, Agefi Switzerland reports.Private banking activities at Valartis are concentrated in three countries: Switzerland, Liechtenstein, and Austria; the latter two countries are not intensely competitive markets, which puts the relatively small size of Valartis in this area in context.At the end of June 2011, assets under management totalled CHF6.5bn (CHF6.3bn as of the end of 2010). Private client assets totalled CHF4.6bn, while institutional clients represented CHF1.9bn.

Jean-Jacques de Gournay, managing partner at Lazard Frères Gestion, has announced in an interview with L’Agefi Suisse that a location in Switzerland is a priority objective for Lazard. “We are planning to develop in private wealth management in Europe. For the moment, we are highly present in France, and we created a structure in Spain a few months ago. In the short term, we would like to open an office in Switzerland. However, it is not our intention to do it quickly. We want to avoid the start-and-go approach which is popular among many Anglo-American firms. When we arrive somewhere, we stay a long time. We need to find someone who is both a developer and a manager, which is a difficult mission,” de Gournay explains to the Swiss newspaper. Asset management last year generated 43% of revenues for the group, returning to the level it had enjoyed in the early years of the last decade.

Pour le conseil général du Rhône, la soulte pour sortir de ses produits structurés est passée de 147 millions d'euros fin 2009 à 420 millions

...

Mario Draghi attendra l'issue du sommet européen pour agir sur la dette souveraine

Mario Draghi attendra l'issue du sommet européen pour agir sur la dette souveraine

Le marché spécule sur un relèvement du plancher de l'euro-franc à court terme. Une hypothèse dont l'efficacité fait cependant débat

Noël Amenc, directeur de l'Edhec Risk Institute, l'institut de recherche spécialisé en gestion d’actifs qui fête ses 10 ans aujourd'hui

Les investisseurs ont fait le pari que le sommet de demain débouchera sur des mesures suffisantes pour justifier une action plus forte de la BCE

Même si tout nouveau PSI est écarté, le Mécanisme européen de stabilité intégrera des clauses destinées à faciliter les restructurations

Un rapport d’audit sur la structure de défaisance des prêts toxiques des banques préconiserait une privatisation dans les prochaines années

Dans une lettre, Angela Merkel et Nicolas Sarkozy insistent sur la création de clauses d’action collective pour faciliter les restructurations souveraines.

L’opérateur boursier américain dit ne pas être intéressé par des pans d’activité que Deutsche Börse et Nyse Euronext pourraient scinder afin d’obtenir le feu vert à leur rapprochement. Son PDG Bob Greifeld a en revanche précisé qu’il étudierait le rachat du Liffe, la plate-forme londonienne de Nyse, dans l’éventualité d’une scission.

La société continuera d’acheter des obligations d’Etat françaises malgré la menace qui pèse sur la note de crédit «AAA» de la France, a déclaré hier son responsable mondial des gestions taux, Eric Brard. De son côté, Pascal Blanqué, directeur de la gestion, a promis d’aborder 2012 avec une aussi grande prudence sur les actifs risqués qu’en cette fin d’année dans un environnement où, a-t-il dit, «les piliers traditionnels de l’allocation d’actifs sont ébranlés».

Le groupe de private equity a renoncé à un projet de refinancement d’une dette de 2,6 milliards de dollars australiens (2,0 milliards d’euros) au sein de Nine Entertainment. Des banques créancières, parmi lesquelles Crédit Agricole ou BNP Paribas, ont en effet préféré selon Reuters céder leur dette à des fonds alternatifs cherchant à prendre le contrôle du groupe de médias australien.

MidAmerican Energy Holdings, une société détenue par le financier américain, vient de réaliser son premier investissement dans l’énergie solaire en rachetant à First Solar sa ferme solaire Topaz, en cours de construction en Californie. Représentant un investissement de deux milliards de dollars, elle pourra alimenter quelque 160.000 foyers.