Benjamin Melman, director of the absolute return unit at Edmond de Rothschild Investment Managers (Edrim), who is in charge of the management of the Quadrim 4 and Quadrim 8 funds, has announced that assets in the funds have fallen by about EUR100m since the beginning of the year, due to losses of 0.5% for the former and 2.86% for the latter fund, which are honourable results in light of the highly adverse evolution of the markets, and the skittish mood of some segments of clients.The only current directional bet is a 6% allocation to emerging markets, which the manager admits was made a bit early, although positions have been reduced since. However, “the discount of emerging markets, following a major correction, has returned to its levels at the beginning of the last decade, and emerging markets equities are really inexpensive.” In general, Melman says that he has adopted an «ultra-prudent» management policy: he is not limiting himself to macro strategies, but is also using quantitative IT tools such as trend monitoring and currency volatility. He adds that “the only real way to diversify is not over asset classes but over styles;” and Edrim constantly deploys ten strategies.

With a restructured team in the Asia-Pacific region, Morgan Stanley Investment Management (Morgan Stanley IM) is planning to increase its assets under management to at least USD100bn in the next three to five years, from USD34bn at the end of 2010, Asian Investor reports. A tripling of assets under management will be made easier by an enriched product range, including long-only and private equity funds.

The Julius Baer private banking group, which is seeking to make Asia its second-largest market after Switzerland, has recruited for its team in the Greater China region. Victor Chao Tzu-Ping has joined the group effective immediately, Agefi Switzerland reports. In addition, Catherine Tseng will direct a new strategic initiative in the region which will aim to develop the Key Client segment. Tzu-Ping has over 25 years of experience in private banking, and was most recently head of the Private Wealth Management China division at Deutsche Bank.

East Capital Explorer announced on Tuesday, 4 October that it has recruited Mia Jurke as CEO. Jurke will join the firm on 15 October, after serving as CEO of East Capital Asset Management. Jurke replaces Tiivas Gert, who will join the private equity investment activities of East Capital for the Baltic countries, once the new CEO has begun in her new role. East Capital Explorer was created to allow shareholders to benefit from the expertise of East Capital as an investor in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and turkey, by investing in high-performance businesses in the region which are not publicly traded.

Guillaume Rambourg, a former star manager from Gartmore, is preparing to launch his own hedge fund firm in Paris, according to reports in the Financial Times. The structure, to be entitled Verazzano Capital, will aim to raise USD1bn. Rambourg will be assisted by four partners: the head of the Delta One division of Goldman Sachs, Karim Moussalem; the founder of Lyxor Asset Management, Murielle Maman; a director from the hedge fund division at UBS, Tim Williams, and a former Gartmore senior manager, Tomás Pintó.

State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) has registered six fixed income ETFs on Nyse Euronext in Paris, Agefi reports. The SPDR-branded funds, which have been licensed for sale in France for a few months, and are already listed in London and/or Berlin, invest in public or corporate debt from the euro zone or the United States, and in corporate bonds from emerging markets in local currencies.In order to boost sales, two ETF sales specialists will also join the asset management firm at the end of October, the firm has announced, adding that it is also hiring for two more general positions by the end of this year.

Candidates to acquire the private equity firm Axa PE, which Axa is studying the possibility of selling, have until Tuesday to submit preliminary bids. The US funds TPG and KKR have come forward as candidates, as has the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, according to a source familiar with the matter cited by La Tribune.

Due to “structural problems” at the French-Belgian firm Dexia, selloffs and alliances are on the menu, the website of Le Point magazine reports. As a part of the plans, asset management and private management, which generated EUR1bn last year, are reported already to have found buyers, the magazine reports.

Eaton Vance Management on Monday, 3 October announced the launch of the Eaton Vance Bernstein All Asset Strategy Fund. The product, managed by Richard Bernstein with a macroeconomic approach, invests worldwide in a variety of asset classeds (equities, bonds, commodities, currencies, and others).

BNY Mellon Asset Management is launching BNY Mellon Liquidity Funds, a range of short-term money market funds managed by BNY Mellon Cash Investment Strategies, the division of BNY Mellon Asset Management dedicated to money market and short-term bond management, with USD536bn in assets under management. The range is composed of four funds: BNY Mellon Euro Liquidity Fund, BNY Mellon Sterling Liquidity Fund, BNY Mellon US Dollar Liquidity Fund, and BNY Mellon US Treasury Fund. The strategy of the fund, which is rated AAA by Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s, is based on a conservative money market management approach relying on high quality investments and daily liquidity.

BNY Mellon has renewed its partnership with Eureko B.V., and will thus continue to provide custody services for all assets of the Netherlands-based financial group, which has over EUR38bn in total assets.

Threadneedle Investments has added to its team in Italy with the recruitment of Paolo Tommasino as senior sales manager. He will be in charge of developing activities serving retail clients, family offices and private banks. Before joining Threadneedle, Tommasino worked at Franklin Templaton as senior manager for retail distribution. “The arrival of Paolo Tomasino as a part of our team represents a further step in our development on the Italian market,” Alessandro Aspesi, country head of Italy at Threadneedle, explains. The UK asset management firm arrived in Italy in 2008.

As Gian Luca Giuliani, head of the Iberian market, is building a structure to better serve Spanish clients, Pimco has recruited Victoria Caro, who had worked in the private banking division of Goldman Sachs serving Spain and Portugal, for its London office, Funds People reports. Following the recent enactment of a decision to combine the management activities of Pimco and Allianz Global Investors (AllianzGI) under the single name of Allianz Asset Management, José María Concejo will now concentrate on sales of Allianz Global Investors products in Spain.

N+1 SYZ, the Spanish private banking entity of the SYZ & CO group, on 4 October announced that it has reinforced its presence in Spain, with the addition of two new private bankers in Barcelona, Jordi Grau and Sergio García. The company now comprises three offices in Spain (Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao), and manages EUR700m with a team of 15 senior private bankers. N+1 SYZ launched its private banking division a year and a half ago and now incorporates a number of executives combining a broad experience in private banking at a national and international level. In the last few months, the entity has increased its teams of private bankers in all three cities where it is present.Jordi Grau and Sergio García were both previously senior executives at La Caixa’s private banking division in Catalonia.

The CNMV has issued a license for the DWS Invest Top Dividend Premium LC fund for sale in Spain. The product is registered in Luxembourg (LU0616849567) and had assets of EUR8.34m as of 3 October; it was launched by DWS Investments (Deutsche Bank group) on 11 August 2011. The fund is an optimised version of the DWS Invest Top Dividend fund, a strategy for the selection of equities on the basis of the criterion of sustainably high dividends, which has about EUR6bn in assets, managed by Thomas Schüssler, with a Luxembourg-registered sub-fund representing EUR405.38m in assets. The manager of the new fund, Jens Labusch, practices a strategy of covered options, which will generate added earnings over and above the Top Dividend portfolio. The new fund aims for an annual distribution of 7%.

The number of pension funds undergoing stress tests has increased sharply since 2009, according to a survey by MSCI of 85 pension funds, charities and sovereign funds with total assets under management of roughly USD5.5trn. More than two thirds of the entities surveyed have made stress testing a part of their programme, compared with only 27% in 2009, according to the survey, which also finds that pension funds are most concerned about market risks, counterparty risks and liquidity risks. The survey also finds that participants have sought to understand their liquidity and counteryparty risks by setting up proprietary databases. They have also restructured their portfolios in order to ensure that they include only limited amounts of illiquid assets. Another significant development is that coverage of extreme risks is now a top priority for pension funds, with 41% ensuring coverage for these risks, compared with only 10% in 2009.

The IT services provider Markit on 4 October announced the launch of a commission management platform, Markit Commission Manager, which will allow buy-side institutions to use a range of standardised tools to manage their commission credits with broker-dealers and use them to pay for third-party services.

Axa Investment Managers has announced the launch of Axa World Fund Framlington Natural Resources, a global equity fund designed to capture the long termpositive trends in commodity prices. The fund seeks performance across every commodity type, actively investing in companies operating in the energy, industrial metals, precious metals and soft commodity markets. It invests in companies engaged in activities that span the entire value chain, such as exploration and refining within the oil sector or from fertiliser to machinery within the agricultural sector.The portfolio aims to hold between 70 and 90 stocks with market capitalisations ranging from approximately USD1 to USD350 billion. The stocks are selected based on the fund manager’s strongest convictions shaped by a combination of company analysis and a topdown commodity and macroeconomic view.The fund is managed by an investment team - Sebastien Lagarde, senior portfolio manager and Olivier Eugene, portfolio manager - which also manages the AWFFramlington Hybrid Resources and AWF Framlington Junior Energy portfolios.

The global ETF leader, BlackRock, has called for higher transparency and stronger and more uniform regulation, the Financial Times reports. Joseph Linhares, the head of iShares for Europe, says “ETFs started out as transparent, liquid, simple, vehicles but some have gone to opacity. We need to get back to full transparency across all the range of ETF products.”

The Department of Justice and the Attorney General of the state of New York on Tuesday filed separate civil suits against BNY Mellon Corp, accusing the firm of having defrauded or misled state and public pension funds, private companies, universities and banks in a decade-long scheme of overcharging for foreign exchange, the Wall Street Journal reports. Eric Schneiderman, attorney general of New York, is seeking USD2bn from the bank.

A team of traders from the US hedge fund Moore Capital is preparing to launch a new hedge fund firm in the UK, Stone Milliner Asset Management, the Financial Times reports. Among the founders are Jens-Peter Stein and Kornelius Klobucar, two senior managers from Moore. They will start up with USD1bn in assets, with Moore Capital providing significant seed capital to the firm.

According to José María Marcos, director general for businesses at the CNMV, only EUR850m of the EUR5.995bn in assets in six Spanish real estate funds as of the end of August, or 14.18% of the total, are still in the portfolios of retail investors. The remainder has been taken on by the asset management firms which launched the products, Funds People reports. They now control nearly 86% of total assets.The largest fund, Santander Banif Inmobiliario, which has been wholly taken over by Santander, along accounts for EUR2.475bn in assets under management, and had lost 4.2% of its value year on year as of the end of August. The BBVA Propriedad fund, which has been transformed into a real estate investment firm, as of the end of August still had EUR1.346bn in assets and had lost 3.8% year on year. The only real estate fund to have gained assets (0.1% of assets since the beginning of the year) is Sabadell BS Inmobiliario, which has EUR1.023bn in assets; it has earned 1.1% in the twelve months to the end of August.

An extraordinary general shareholders’ meeting for Sparinvest SICAV (14 sub-funds), held on 30 September, voted to bring the Sicav fund into compliance with the UCITS IV directive, following the issuance of a license to the asset management firm Sparinvest S.A. by the CSSF in July this year. Shareholders also approved the appointment of a new board of directors, with the aim of internationalising the fund. Sparinvest has announced the appointment of three influential people in the world of finance to the board of directors at Sparinvest SICAV. They are Torben Nielsen, chairman, who is a former governor of the Danish central bank (Danmarks Nationalbank), Benedicte Vibe Christensen, former deputy director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and Peter Reedtz, director and owner of the Danish asset allocation institute.

Nous allons continuer à travailler sur le pilier 1 pour améliorer la fiabilité de nos résultats. Aujourd’hui, notre principale occupation concerne le pilier 2 consacré à la mesure et à la gestion des risques témoigne Guillaume Ville, responsable ALM et Solvabilité 2 au sein de la Carac. Des études ont été initiées pour la mise en place du pilier 3, qui couvre la diffusion d’information et le reporting relatif à la solvabilité de la mutuelle. Toutes les équipes de la Carac au sein des différents services de notre mutuelle sont impliquées dans la mise en ??uvre de Solvabilité 2.

Le Conseil régional Poitou-Charentes, Poitiers a décidé de créer et de doter un fonds de co-investissement en faveur des PME/PMI régionales innovantes en phase d’amorçage ou de développement. Ce fonds de co-investissement a vocation à intervenir en fonds propres ou quasi fonds propres (par voie de souscription d’actions, d’obligations, de comptes-courants bloqués ou d’autres prêts participatifs) avec un ou plusieurs investisseurs partenaires préalablement agréés, exclusivement en co-investissement, pari passu, au sein de PME/PMI éligibles sélectionnées par le ou les investisseurs partenaires. Il est précisé que le fonds investira dans les entreprises concernées de manière minoritaire (au plus 50 %) et conjointement, avec le partenaire financier et selon les mêmes conditions, le même niveau de risque et de subordination. Ces investisseurs partenaires sont des fonds, des sociétés de capital risque et des business angels (ci-après dénommés les «partenaires financiers décisionnels»), qui sont retenus après appel de manifestations d’intérêt. Un appel de manifestations d’intérêt est donc lancé par le fonds de co-investissement Poitou-Charentes pour sélectionner ses partenaires financiers décisionnels. Le présent appel de manifestations d’intérêt ne prévoit à ce stade qu’une seule date limite de remise de dossiers de candidature: jusqu’au 30.8.2012. Toutes les précisions relatives aux objectifs et caractéristiques des projets appelés et aux conditions de candidatures sont disponibles sur le règlement de l’appel de manifestations d’intérêt téléchargeable sur le site web de la Région Poitou-Charentes à l’adresse web suivante: http://www.poitou-charentes.fr/services-en-ligne/guide-aides/-/aides/detail/248 Il est précisé que cet appel à projet s’inscrit dans le cadre défini au niveau européen (1re mesure du régime communautaire cadre N629/2007 d’interventions publiques en capital-investissement régional) et fait l’objet d’un cofinancement européen au titre du programme opérationnel (PO) FEDER 2007-2013 et notamment de l’axe prioritaire 1 intitulé «Développer les capacités d’innovation dans une démarche de développement durable». Pour lire l’avis complet: cliquez ici

Après plusieurs heures de négociation mardi à Luxembourg, le Conseil Ecofin a finalement réussi à arrêter une position sur la compensation des produits dérivés. Paris semblait satisfait de la solution retenue pour la supervision des chambres de compensation, principale pomme de discorde avec Londres. La Banque centrale européenne fera bien partie du collège des superviseurs, y compris pour les infrastructures basées à Londres comme LCH ou ICE. Londres a obtenu de réintroduire le droit, pour les chambres de compensation, d’accéder aux flux de transactions des dérivés de gré à gré (OTC) sur une base non discriminatoire. Cet accord à Vingt-Sept ne clôt pas pour autant la négociation. Il ouvre le début des discussions avec le Parlement européen, co-législateur, où l’eurodéputé allemand Werner Langen, est en charge du texte.

Les premiers chèques d’indemnisation aux victimes du financier américain seront postés aujourd’hui, pour un montant total de 312 millions de dollars soit 4,6 cents pour chaque dollar perdu, a annoncé le responsable de la liquidation des fonds de Bernard Madoff, Irving Picard.

Bloomberg croit savoir que Citigroup devrait recevoir des offres inférieures à ses attentes pour le rachat de l’éditeur musical du fait des conditions de crédit incertaines. La banque pourrait être contrainte de vendre EMI en plusieurs morceaux voire tout simplement de renoncer à l’opération. Une vente intégrale pourrait rapporter jusqu’à 3,2 milliards de dollars.

La société de gestion détenue à 75 % par CDC Climat (Caisse des Dépôts) et à 25 % par Proparco (groupe AFD), a reçu fin septembre de l’Autorité des marchés financiers son agrément en qualité de société de gestion de portefeuille, spécialisée en actifs carbone. CDC Climat Asset Management gère déjà 90 millions d’euros.

Les places boursières mondiales ont vécu hier une nouvelle séance chahutée, les Européens ne parvenant pas à susciter un climat de confiance