En septembre 2010, la Commerzbank avait dû geler les remboursements du Premium Management Immobilien Anlagen (PMIA), qui investissait dans des fonds immobiliers offerts au public dont les remboursements avaient eux-mêmes été suspendus. A présent, rapporte le Handelsblatt, la banque propose pour les quatre prochaines semaines aux souscripteurs du PMIA un montant de 43,38 euros pour chaque part émise à 50 euros.Ce montant correspond d’après la Commerzbank à 92 % de la valeur liquidative alors qu’en Bourse les parts se traitent actuellement aux alentours de 33 euros l’unité.

Citi a annoncé le 11 août le lancement d’une activité de services à destination du marché des ETF dans la région Asie-Pacifique.Citi ETF Services fournira aux émetteurs d’ETF dans la région des solutions intégrées comprenant notamment la tenue de marché, l’administration, la conservation et la comptabilité. L’activité dans la région sera co-dirigée par Bob Simon et Jeff McCarthy. Le premier est actuellement responsable du «programme trading» de Citi Global Markets à Hong Kong, le second étant basé à New York où il est responsable mondial des produits ETF pour la partie «securities and fund services».

Pour un montant non divulgué, nabInvest (51 milliards de de dollars australiens d’encours), la filiale de gestion d’actifs de National Australia Bank (NAB), acquiert Aviva Investors Australia (5,5 milliards de dollars australiens). Cette transaction exclut les activités immobilières directes d’Aviva Investors Australie ainsi que les ressources qui ne sont pas directement liées à l’activité du groupe en Australie.Aviva Investors a l’intention désormais de concentrer le développement de sa présence en Asie-Pacifique à Singapour.

Le fonds souverain norvégien, Government Pension Fund Global, a dégagé une performance de 0,3 %, soit 4 milliards de couronnes norvégiennes, au deuxième trimestre 2011, ce qui est inférieur de 0,1 point au rendement des indices de référence du fonds. Dans le détail, la poche actions du fonds, qui représente 60,5 % du total, a perdu 0,7 % sur les trois mois, tandis que les investissements obligataires, qui pèsent 39,4 % du portefeuille, ont gagné 1,8 % en devises internationales (0,1 % du fonds est investi en immobilier). Les encours du fonds ont augmenté de 9 milliards de couronnes norvégiennes à 3.111 milliards de couronnes, grâce à l’effet performance, et aux 53 milliards de couronnes injectés par le gouvernement. En revanche, l’affermissement de la couronne norvégienne face à de nombreuses devises dans lesquelles le fonds est investi a réduit les encours de 48 milliards.

HSBC Singapore vient de nommer Paul Arrowsmith en qualité de responsable de la banque de détail et de la gestion de fortune à Singapour, rapporte Wealthbriefing.Dans ses nouvelles fonctions, Paul Arrowsmith aura la responsabilité de toutes les activités liées notamment à la gestion de fortune, dont l’assurance et la gestion d’actifs. Il est rattaché à Alex Hungate, general groupe manager et chief executive pour Singapour.

On Monday, HSBC Global Asset Management (Deutschland) announced that it is releasing the Asian Currencies Bond (ISIN: LU0210635255), a sub-fund of its Luxembourg Sicav HSBC GIF (see Newsmanagers of 8 June) for sale in Germany. As its name indicates, the fund invests in Asian bonds denominated in local currencies, and which hopes thereby to profit from potential appreciation of these currencies. The base currency for the new product is the US dollar.The fund, whose benchmark is the Markit iBoxx ABF Pan Asian ex China and HK Index, is managed by Cecilia Chan, who is also Fixed Income CIO Asia Pacific at HSBC Global AM, and by Alfred Mui.

Allianz Global Investors has announced in a statement that it has closed the German-registered real estate fund of funds Premium Managmeent Immobilien-Anlagen, whose assets had been frozen since 23 September 2010. The closure will mean that shareholders will have access to their invested capital.By October this year, an initial batch of EUR500m will be distributed to investors, a statement says.Commerzbank, which was the exclusive distributor of the fund, will be offering its 50,000 clients who hold shares in the fund 43 euros for every 50 euros they have invested in the product, fondsprofessionell reports. The shares were trading most recently at EUR33 per share, Reuters reports.

In September 2010, Commerzbank was compelled to freeze redemptions from the Premium Management Immobilien Anlagen fund (PMIA), which invested in open-ended real estate funds whose redemptions had themselves been suspended. Now, Handelsblatt reports, the bank is offering subscribers in the PMIA fund a reimbursement of EUR43.38 for every EUR50 they had invested in the fund, for a four-week period.Commerzbank says this amount corresponds to 92% of the net asset value of the fund, even though shares in the fund are now trading on the stock exchange at 33 euros each.

According to a source familiar with the matter cited by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Credit Suisse Germany is intensifying its preparations to reopen redemptions from the real estate fund CS Euroreal (about EUR6bn in assets): the manager is reported to have sold two commercial properties located in Dresden and Leipzig to RREEF (Deutsche Bank) for EUR140m. At the beginning of this month, the fund had already announced the sale of three other properties in a move to increase its liquidity levels.

John Paulson has reduced his stake in Bank of America by half, according to the Financial Times. Paulson & Co held 60.5 million shares in the bank as of the end of June, a stake which was worth over USD780m as of the end of trading on Monday. The hedge fund has also reduced its stake in Citigroup by 19%, to 33.5 million shares, a stake which is now worth USD1.05bn; but the fund has increased its stake in Wells Fargo by two thirds, to 33.6 million shares, or USD840m. The largest publicly known position of the fund remains its investment in the ETF SPDR Gold Trust, valued at USD4.6bn.

Polar Capital va lancer un fonds Amérique du Nord pour ses nouvelles recrues Andrew Holliman et Richard Wilson, qui ont rejoint la société en provenance de Threadneedle en début d’année, rapporte Citywire.

Citi has set up a new business to service the ETF market in Asia. Citi ETF Services will cover the Asia-Pacific region and will provide a single channel for clients looking to launch ETFs within the region. It will offer integrated solutions for ETF issuers, combining market-making, seed capital, administration, custody and accounting. Citi ETF Services in Asia Pacific will be co-headed by Bob Simon and Jeff McCarthy. Simon is currently programmetrading head for Citi Global Markets, Hong Kong, and McCarthy is currently global head of ETF products for the securities and fund services business, based in New York. Both will maintain these existing roles and will jointly report to David Russell, head of securities and fund services for Citi in Asia Pacific, and Richard Heyes, head of Pan-Asia equities.

The French financial market regulator, the Autortié des marchés financiers (AMF), on 12 August issued a statement warning the public against the activities of the Victory Suisse company, whose official headquarters are in Bernex, Switzerland. The firm offers retail investors investments which promise high returns of 6% to 8% per month, with a capital guarantee. The AMF notes that the Victory Suisse company and its distribution network, Victory Invest, and the other companies of the group, Sofinex, S.F. Vectory Consulting, S.F. Vectory Investment and Vectory France, are not licensed to provide investment services or financial investment advising in France, nor are they qualified to provide banking or financial services. As a result, the AMF recommends that investors not respond to solicitations for investments from any of these companies, and not to redistribute those solicitations to third parties in any form whatsoever.

Ten Cate has joined BNY Mellon AM as managing director for the Netherlands, IPE reports. In his new role, Cate will be the legal counsel for various services offered by the US group to Netherlands-based pension funds. BNY Mellon provides fund administration services for about 30% of Dutch pension funds, and handles asset management for roughly 12 of them.Cate previously worked at the UK firm Insight Investments (EUR150bn in assets under management), which was recently acquired by BNY Mellon.

In the week ending on 10 August, in a period on the markets which was particularly agitated to the loss by the United States of its AAA credit rating and a variety of rumours, disappointing macroeconomic data and continuing tension on the markets due to the European debt crisis, trading of shares in investment funds was market by an explosion in redemptions in most fund categories, according to estimates by EPFR Global.Equities funds saw outflows of USD26.1bn, a level not seen since the end of second quarter 2008. The theory that the performance of emerging markets is no longer integrally tied to developed markets was disproven by the data, as emerging markets equities funds saw net outflows of USD7bn in the week to 10 August, the largest seen since early 2008. The same trend was observed in bond funds, where net outflows totalled USD10.4bn. High yield bond funds alone represented two thirds of these outflows, despite default rates which remain relatively low, and a pledge by the US Federal Reserve to maintain interest rates at a low level for two years. International and European bond funds saw net outflows of nearly USD1bn.However, money market funds, from which outflows continued last week, attracted record net inflows of USD49.8bn in the week to 10 August. Another beneficiary of the recent turbulence was commodities funds, and particularly funds specialised in gold and precious metals, which since the beginning of July, have posted net inflows of nearly USD9bn. This development was, however, tempered by redemptions from industrial commodities funds.

According to the website ifaonline, Deborah Fuhr, who has recently left BlackRock, will be joining Bank of America Merrill Lynch in London, as head of the Global Delta One strategy, which includes ETFs as its primary vehicle. Fuhr will report to Piers Butler, head of the EMEA Global Equity, Macro and Events group, and may begin in her new role in September.

Polar Capital will launch a North American fund for its new recruits, Andrew Holliman and Richard Wilson, who joined the firm from Threadneedle earlier this year, Citywire reports.

US open-ended mutual funds saw net outflows in July of USD17.1bn, the heaviest outflows since December 2008, once again driven by massive redemptions from mutual funds, according to the most recent statistics from Morningstar. For long-term funds, excluding money market funds, outflows totalled slightly over USD17bn in July, but in the first seven months of the year, funds have seen net inflows of nearly USD118bn. Equities funds finished the month of July with outflows of USD22.88bn, a level not seen since October 2008, a month in which, at the height of the financial crisis, outflows totalled USD27.9bn. Since the beginning of this year, outflows have totalled USD14.2bn. Bond funds, for their part, have posted a net inflow of USD8.87bn in July, and of USD102.1bn since the beginning of the year, as municipal bond funds remained unpopular with investors for the third consecutive month. Money market funds saw heavy outflows in July, totalling USD107.62bn, so that since the beginning of the year, outflows totall USD222.99bn, compared with USD476bn for the year 2010 as a whole. For ETFs, the month of July finished with net inflows of USD17.2bn, following inflows of nearly USD10bn the previous month. Since the beginning of the year, ETFs have attracted USD74.49bn over a twelve-month period, with assets up by about 25%. US equities ETFs posted a net inflow of USD6.4bn in July, and of slightly over USD30bn since the beginning of the year. ETFs dedicated to international equities also finished the month with strong inflows, totalling USD3.75bn (USD15.15bn in inflows since the beginning of the year). Bond ETFs also made another positive contribution, with net subscriptions of USD3.28bn in July. This asset class has not seen outflows since the end of 2010. Commodities ETFs last month found favour with investors once again, with net inflows of USD3.74bn, following two consecutive months of outflows (USD3.7bn in May and USD892m in June).

On Monday, Wells Fargo & Co announced that it is recruiting 25 investment bankers who had previously worked at the hedge fund management firm Citadel, based in Chicago, and that it will also be taking over the transactions that the traders worked on, the Wall Street Journal reports.The recruitments will apparently not result in any settlements to Citadel, but Wells Fargo will pay back a portion of the fees earned on the operations which it is taking over, including on a stake in the consortium responsible for the initial public offering of Groupon Inc.

The Austrian Marius Dorfmeister has been serving since 1 August as head of international wholesale and institutional operations at the Swiss bank Sarasin. In this position he reports to Aris Prepoudis, head of the Institutional Clients & Wholesale unit, who has also been serving in the interim in the role now delegated to Dorfmeister, who had previously been at Falcon Private Bank in Zurich and Vienna.Markets in Benelux, Italy, Scandinavia and central and eastern Europe, and operations in Asia and the Middle East will all be included in the International Institutional and Wholesale unit, which will be led by Dorfmeister. In Vienna, Alexandra Lang became head of institutional and wholesale clients for Austria and central Europe on 1 July 2011.Operations serving institutional clients of the Sarasin group as of the end of June had assets under management of CHF28.2bn, with net inflows of CHF1.9bn in first quarter.

Clariden Leu, an affiliate of Credit Suisse, posted net inflows of CHF3.3bn in first quarter 2011, for an annualised growth rate of 7%. Net profits totalled CHF155m, a strong increase compared with the CHF102m posted in the equivalent period last year, according to a statement released on 15 August.Despite strong net inflows, assets under management as of the end of June totalled CHF94bn, compared with CHF99bn as of the end of first quarter 2010, due to the rising value of the Swiss franc and market volatility.

Redemptions from the European funds industry totalled EUR25.2bn in June, reversing the inflows of EUR24.1bn achieved last month, according to the latest statistics of Lipper. However, with money market activity excluded, total industry sales kept in positive territory (EUR640m), although even this was propped up by ETF activity of nearly EUR2bn.Investors withdrew from equity funds (-EUR3.3bn when ETFs are excluded). Even sales in the bond arena hit a four month low (EUR3.8bn) as high yield products — one of the success stories of 2011 — fell into the red (-EUR3.6bn).Both equity (EUR2.1bn) and bond (EUR3bn) global emerging market funds enjoyed success, so that investor appetite looked rather like that seen last year.With appetite for bond funds from some providers remaining strong, Franklin Templeton (EUR3.2bn) and Allianz/Pimco (EUR1.8bn) topped the best-sellers list. BlackRock was the best-selling equity group (EUR860m).Over the first six months of 2011, equity sales (EUR30.5bn) have been pretty similar to the level achieved over the same period last year (EUR28.5bn). The real change has come on the fixed income and mixed asset sides, where inflows of EUR72.2bn and EUR39.4bn in 2010 have dropped to EUR26.4bn and EUR18.5bn this year. Absolute return fund sales also fell, from EUR17.4bn to EUR10.8bn over the same periods.Long-term fund sales (excluding money market funds) over the first six months of 2011 (EUR90.7bn) are 40% down on those achieved over the same period last year (EUR152.2bn).

The Government Pension Fund - Global returned 0.3 percent, or 4 billion kroner, in the second quarter of 2011 after rising bond prices outweighed a slump in large parts of the stock markets.The fund’s equity holdings returned -0.7 percent in the quarter, while fixed-income investments returned 1.8 percent, as measured in international currency. The overall return was 0.1 percentage point lower than the return on the fund’s benchmark indices. The market value of the fund rose 9 billion kroner to 3,111 billion kroner in the quarter. The fund returned 4 billion kroner in the period and had 53 billion kroner in capital inflows from the government. The krone strengthened against several of the currencies the fund invests in, reducing the market value by 48 billion kroner.The fund held 60.5 percent in equities, 39.4 percent in fixed-income securities and 0.1 percent in real estate at the end of the quarter.

Christian Pellis, a managing board member, has told the Börsen-Zeitung that LGT Capital Management will be setting up distribution in the United Kingdom and Singapore by the end of September. In Germany, where LGT AM has been present for a year, assets total EUR304m, and the business has had EUR147 in net inflows since 1 January 2011.

The European Commission on 12 August welcomes the move to bar short-selling of financial sector shares undertaken by four euro zone countries (see Newsmanagers of 12 August), but stated that a European framework would be better adapted to managing such cases. “The European Commission … welcomes recent developments warmly. However, our policy would be even more effective and coordinated if we were to set up a European frameowrk to govern short-selling,” Chantal Hughes, spokesperson for the Commission, said in a press conference. Germany, for its part, on Friday announced that it was planning to propose an extension to the ban on naked short positions to all of Europe for equities, government bonds, and credit default swaps (CDS). According to a spokesperson for the German finance minister, Germany supports the similar measures which have been in effect since Friday in France, Italy, Spain and Belgium, and adds that such a ban is the only way to confront “destructive speculation.” The British market authorities have stated that they have no current plans to forbid short-selling in the United Kingdom. The European Securities Markets Authority (ESMA) is not planning to extend the ban to short-selling in other European countries, but has not ruled out such a move completely, its president, Steven Majoor, has told Reuters.

Joseph “Skip” Skowron, a former hedge fund manager at FrontPoint Partners, on Monday pleaded guilty before a criminal tribunal to charges that he used inside information provided to him by the French doctor Yves Benhamou to make investments for six health sector funds from FrontPoint in January 2008, which allowed him to avoid millions of dollars in trading losses, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The US market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has launched an investigation into the calculation methods used by the financial ratings agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) for their decision to lower the solvency rating for the United States, the Wall Street Journel reports on 13 August. According to the newspaper, citing sources familiar with the matter, the SEC has launched a vast investigation of practices at the ratings agency, including the methods used in the decision to withdraw the United States’ AAA rating on 5 August. Investigators from the regulatory authority are studying the models used for the calculations, which are contested by the US Treasury, which claims that there was a Usd2trn error in the budgetary projections by S&P, the newspaper explains. Investigators are also seeking to determine which employees at the agency were aware of the decision ahead of its announcement, in order to determine if any insider trading took place, the Wall Street Journal continues.

In a public letter published in the New York Times on Monday, the billionaire investor Warren Buffett has called on the “super committee” of the US Congress charged with finding means to reduce the national deficit, to increase taxes on households which earn over USD1m per year. “My friends and I have been pampered for a long time by a Congress which defends the cause of billionaires,” he writes. “The time has come for the government to get serious about sharing the sacrifices.”

HSBC Singapore has appointed Paul Arrowsmith as head of retail banking and wealth management in Singapore, Wealthbriefing reports. In his new role, Arrowsmith will be in charge of all activities related to wealth management, including insurance and asset management. He will report to Alex Hungate, general group manager and chief executive for Singapore.

The Canadian financial services firm Power Corp will acquire a 10% stake in the asset management firm China AMC, in which CITIC Securities had held a 100% stake, in violation of Chinese legislation which forbids foreign shareholders from controlling more than 49% in a local asset management firm, for CNY1.78bn, or USD280m, which according to Z-Ben Advisors corresponds to 8% of assets under management by the business. As of the end of June, assets at China AMC totalled CNY221.5bn, representing a 9.5% share of the Chinese market.Once the deal is approved by the Chinese regulatory authority, the CSRC, China AMC will legally become a joint venture, as Shandong Rural Economy Development & Investment Company has already acquired a 10% stake in the management firm for USD250m (CNY1.6bn), and South Industry Asset Management Company has acquired an 11% stake in the business for USD275m, or CNY1.76bn. Z-Ben Advisors reports that two other 10% stakes in China AMC will be sold off in the near future, probably to Chinese government-controlled companies.