Luis Muñoz, qui a rejoint Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking (SG CIB) le mois dernier, sera particulièrement chargé de la distribution des produits structurés au sein de l’activité solutions multi-classes d’actifs pour l’Espagne et le Portugal. Il était en dernier lieu directeur exécutif pour l’activité dérivés chez Morgan Stanley à Londres.

La nomination officielle de Xavier Guillon à la tête d'Oyster Funds, la division fonds d'investissement de la Banque Syz & Co a été annoncée le 12 octobre. Désormais, le manager a pris ses marques et bouclé les premiers chantiers. Il peut donc aborder avec NewsManagers les grandes lignes de sa stratégie de développement.

En mai, les investisseurs suédois ont à nouveau délaissé les fonds actions, alors qu’ils y étaient revenus massivement en avril. Ainsi, les fonds actions commercialisés en Suède ont accusé des rachats nets de 1,9 milliard de couronnes suédoises le mois dernier, selon les dernières statistiques de Fondbolagens Förening, l’association suédoise des fonds d’investissement. En avril, ils avaient enregistré des souscriptions nettes de 9,3 milliards de couronnes après deux mois de sorties nettes. Depuis le début de l’année, les fonds actions voient sortir, en net, 1 milliard de couronnes.Néanmoins, en mai, le secteur des fonds commercialisés en Suède affiche une collecte nette, grâce aux souscriptions sur les autres classes d’actifs, et notamment sur les fonds monétaires (1,7 milliard de couronnes) et les fonds obligataires (1,3 milliard). A fin mai, les fonds en Suède représentaient un encours de 1.971 milliards de couronnes, dont 1.169 milliards investis dans des fonds actions.

Maple Group Acquisition Corp., the vehicle which has been launched for a counter-bid to acquire the Toronto stock exchange (TMX, which is being wooed by the London Stock Exchange), bringing together Canadian banks and pension funds, on Sunday announced that it has signed up four new members: The Quebec financial group Desjardins, GMP Capital, Dundee Capital Markets, and Manulife Financial.

On 10 June, the CNMV announced that it has granted permission, at the request of the asset management firm BBVA Asset Management and of BBVA as the depository, to convert the real estate fund BBVA Propriedad into a REIT format real estate investment firm. Assets in the fund as of the end of April, according to statistics from the Spanish Inverco association of management firms, totalled EUR1.3bn.

The Spanish arm of Société Générale was issued a license by the CNMV on 10 June to release the Lyxor Active Commodities Fund and Lyxor Epsilon Global Trend Fund sub-funds of its Irish Sicav Investments Strategies Plc.The regulator has also issued sales licenses to Allfunds Bank for the C, I and S share classes in the French-registered fund Saint-Honoré Signatures Financières (see Newsmanagers of 20 April), from Edmond de Rothschild Investment Managers (EdRIM).

Julio Segura, president of the Spanish securities commission (CNMV), says that rating agencies continue to be subject to conflicts of interest, so long as they are paid by issuers that they rate, Cinco Días reports. At an unveiling of a book entitled “A century of Spanish financial history,” at the Bank of Spain, Segura stated that the solution would be to make ratings be paid for by those who use them, since the creation of an official agency would run the risk of creatind problems when it came to ratings of government bonds.

Markus Novak, who had served at Skandia at head of distribution clients, wealth management firms and banks in Germany, has joined JPMorgan Asset Management as second in command to Charles Neus, concentrating on sales to insurers and their networks.

In a letter cited by the Wall Street Journal, the head of enforcement at the SEC, Robert Khuzami, has refused to disclose details to Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, Republican head of the legal commission, about the way in which the regulatory authority has made use of referrals from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) about questionable transactions by the hedge fund management firm SEC Capital Advisors. The senator says that he considers the response unacceptable.

Zvi Goffer, a former Galleon Group trader nicknamed Octopussy, as well as his brother Emanuel Goffer and Michael Kimelman been found guilty of insider trading, according to the Financial Times. They are accused of trading ahead of corporate takeover announcements of which they learnt from two Ropes & Gray lawyers advising the companies on the deals.

According to an annual survey by the French financial management association (AFG) of employee savings levels, assets under management in this area as of the end of December totalled a record EUR88.6bn, which represents a 4.5% increase over a total fo USD84.8bn as of the end of 2009 (as of the end of 2008, they were down to EUR71.42bn, comapred with EUR87.6bn twelve months earlier).The AFG states that contributions to employee savings plans totalled EUR13.3bn in 2010, compared with EUR11.8bn in 2009, an increase of 12.7%, “largely due to an increase in employees’ voluntary contributions,” which themselves represented EUR4.2bn. Meanwhile, redemptions totalled EUR10.6bn, so that net subscriptions totalled EUR2.7bn, of which over EUR880m (about one third of net inflows) were for PERCO plans.

Luis Muñoz, who joined Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking (SG CIB) last month, will be in charge of distribution of structured products and multi-asset class solutions for Spain and Portugal. He most recently served as executive director for derivatives activity at Morgan Stanley in London.

On 22 April 2011, the Italian UniCredit bank announced that it will not be selling its asset management unit Pioneer Investments, and will be preferring internal growth. The announcement marked the end of a long period of uncertainty and speculation about the future of the firm, which was being wooed by the French firms Amundi and Natixis. Despite these difficult times, in 2010, the Paris office of Pioneer had “its best year ever” in terms of inflows, according to the director, Fabien Madar. The firm has posted net inflows of EUR300m, and finished the year with EUR1.5bn of assets under management. “2010 was a year of great success for our sales team. We needed to show that despite the strategic review our company was subject to, our future was not up in the air. We therefore needed to stay close to clients, which we did, and which they appreciated.” And since the beginning of the year, the Paris office has taken on a further EUR100m, putting assets at EUR1.6bn, of which 60% are for wholesale clients, and 40% for institutionals. The objective is to achieve net subscriptions of EUR250m by the end of the year. Madar’s ambitions don’t stop at the borders of France, and also extend to Monaco, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and since May, the Netherlands and Nordic countries, an area which represents slightly over EUR1bn in assets. The new position was handed to Madar following the departure of Jilert Blom, who had been head of the Netherlands and the Nordic countries. Combining these countries with the French-speaking ones can be explained as due to the fact that these markets are both institutional and wholesale, and they are at the same level of technicity as France, Madar says. Pioneer has now built itself a presence serving Dutch clients and a few in Sweden. But the firm, led by Madar, is also planning to develop in Denmark, Finland, and Norway. One sales person based in Amsterdam will be serving all these markets, while a country manager for the entire region is in a recruitment phase. For these countries, “we have no quantitative objectives for the moment, but rather qualitative objectives: to take on as many clients as possible,” says Madar. As to a potential physical presence in Scandinavia, that will come in time, depending on the results of ongoing development.

The British investment management association (IMA) claims that reforms to the financial services compensation scheme (FSCS) could make the British market more attractive as a platform for international management groups. The failures of the past three years (the Keydata affair not least) had a cost of about EUR500m for the financial services industry, the chairman of the professional association, Douglas Ferrans, says, and calls on the FSA to make reform of the compensation regime a priority.

The former Gartmore multi-managers Ari Towli and Nick Roberts have joined the multi-management boutique North Investments Partners, Investment Week reports. The two will work with Nick Stanhope on the range of multi-management products, whose assets under management as of 31 May totalled GBP450m. Both of them will report to the chief executive of North IP, John Husselbee.

After eleven years at Gartmore, where he was most recently head of intermediary sales, Warren Shiels was recruited by Man Group on 6 June as director, UK retail. He will be in charge of overseeing sales of long-only and absolute return funds from Man as well as GLG to third parties such as life offices, platforms, and IFAs.

Anthony Cheung, a fund manager specialised in China in the global emerging markets team at Gartmore Investment Management, has been recruited by Pictet Asset Management, and has joined the Asian total return team, in which he will be co-manager of long/short funds, under Nidhi Mahhurkar, CityWire reports.

Helios Investment Partners, a pan-African private equity group co-founded by a former TPG exécutive, has raised USD900m, the largest ever amount of money for a new private equity fund targeting Africa, according to the Financial Times. Helios sourced its funding from US university endowments, Asian sovereign wealth funds, large African corporate pension funds and European and American fund of funds as well as development finance institutions.

Since the launch of the first physical gold ETF fund in 2003, funds of this type have attracted a total of USD70bn in assets which would otherwise have been invested in gold mines equity, the Wall Street Journal claims.According to the independent research institute MineFund, thirteen of the largest gold producers will distribute a total of USD2bn in dividends, in a bid to win back the interest of investors. Among the firms are Barrick Gold, Newmount Mining and Goldcorp. Newmont has even defined a dividend indexed to the price of gold, which would increase its dividend by USD0.20 for every USD100 rise in the price of the precious metal.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch and the World Bank have announced plans to offer a periodical range of green bonds from the World Bank, aimed at investors at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. The first World Bank green bonds, which offer environmentally-friendly solutions via an investment grade bond investment, were launched in second quarter 2011.

The US Federal Reserve does not appear to be in a hurry to enter a new phase of quantitative easing, at a time when the European Central Bank has implied that it may raise its rates in July, so that investors rolled their portfolios over into bonds in the first days of June. According to the most recent estimates by EPFR Grlobal, bond funds attracted a net total of USD5.98bn in the week to 8 June. Money market funds, for their part, have posted net inflows of over USD26bn, while equity funds saw outfllows of USD7.74bn. Funds dedicated to US equities, in particular, have posted their heaviest outflows since mid-August 2010. Inflows to European equities remained positive, with inflows of USD236m in the week to 8 June. However, institutional engagements have gone mostly to German equities in 2011. Now counting flows which have totalled over USD6bn since the beginning of the year, European equity funds have seen outflows of over USD1.5bn. Diversified funds posted net inflows of USD219m, which brings inflows since the beginning of the year to over USD15.3bn.

As Newsmanagers announced on 25 May, Pictet Asset Management is putting the finishing touches on a credit fund which will aim to capture as much as possible of gains and to protect the portfolio, or to come out a winner in falling markets.The fund is a UCITS long/short fund, which has not yet received a sales license from Luxembourg’s CSSF, but which has been fully tested in the asset management firm’s incubator. It will use a relative value approach to credit, and will be a multi-strategy product, with directional and non-directional bets, active positioning in trading, and an event-driven aspect. It will invest primarily in investment-grade securities, without a regional constraint, but with hedging for currency and duration risks.The Swiss asset manager is also preparing an Asian version of the fund, which may be launched in fourth quarter, and a long/short equities products, which, if all goes well, will be released on the market early next year.

In April, net inflows to funds in Europe were at their highest levels for 6 months, at EUR24.8bn, excluding money market activity, and EUR28.6bn including money market funds (of which EUR2.4bn were for French products), according to statistics from Lipper. The top three asset management firms in terms of subscriptions were Franklin Templeton, which holds onto the top spot with EUR3.3bn, followed by Allianz Global Investors/Pimco with EUR2bn, and GAM Holding with EUR1.3bn. Although net sales of bonds funds have increased for the fourth month in a row, to EUR7bn (compared with EUR4.7bn in March; see Newsmanagers of 13 May), equity funds have seen a spectacular recovery, with EUR12.9bn in net inflows, compared with EUR8.5bn in net outflows the previous month. Funds on sale across borders have seen net subscriptions of EUR10.6bn for bonds, and EUR7.8bn for equities, while Italian, Dutch and Spanish investors have made net redemptions. Lipper also points to good results for commodities and raw materials funds, which have attracted EUR960m and EUR860m in subscriptions, respectively, bringing the total for the first four months of the year to EUR3.7bn and EUR4.4bn.

The Hedge Fund Journal reports that assets under management by the Schroders UCITS-compliant hedge fund platform Schroder GAIA have topped USD1.03bn, only 18 months after the launch of the platform. The platform now includes five funds of which three are managed by external hedge fund managers, and two are internally managed. The most recent fund offered to investors is the Schroder GAIA CQS, a long/short credit strategy.

On 31 May, assets at Invesco totalled USD661.4bn, compared with USD668bn one month earlier. The decline has also affected ETFs, UITs, and passive funds (USD93.4bn, compared with USD97.2bn), and other funds (USD568bn, compared with USD571.4bn). The declines are due to net outflows from the ETF PowerShares QQQ, falling markets, and a negative currency effect of USD2.5bn. However, Invesco says that UITs and passive funds have posted net subscriptions.For its part, Franklin Templeton Investments as of 31 May had assets under management of USD735.8bn, compared with USD733.1bn one month previously, despite a decline to USD316.4bn, from USD321.3bn one month earlier for equities funds. Bond funds, however, have posted an increase in assets to USD296.4bn, from USD288.5bn.

In addition to the French-registered fund Aberdeen Actions Euro (FR0000985442), the range of products from Aberdeen which are eligible for PEA plans now includes three European equities funds, all of them Luxembourg-registered products, the Paris office of the Scottish management firm has announced.The new additions are the retail (LU009454144) and institutional (LU0231472209) classes of the Aberdeen Global European Equity Fund,, the retail share class of the European Equity ex-UK (LU0231484808), and the retail (LU0505661966) and institutional (LU0505783646) share classes of the Dividend Europe fund.

Barclays Capital Fund Solutions, the asset management unit of Barclays Capital, late last week announced the launch of a UCITS format return fund in Singapore, entitled Barclays Real Return USD Fund, Asian Investor reports. The fund will invest up to 70% of its assets in bonds, including inflation-linked bonds. The remaining 30% will be invested in commodities and money markets, depending on market conditions.

In May, Swedish investors once again turned their backs on equity funds, though they had massively returned to them in April. Equity funds on sale in Sweden saw net outflows of SEK1.9bn last month, according to statistics from Fondbolagens Förening, the Swedish investment fund association. In April, funds posted net inflows of SEK9.3bn, following two months of net outflows. Since the beginning of the year, equity funds saw net outflows of SEK1bn. In May, funds on sale in Sweden show net inflows, due to subscriptions to other asset classes, particularly money market funds (SEK1.7bn), and bond funds (SEK1.3bn). As of the end of May, funds in Sweden represented assets of SEK1.971trn, of which SEK1.169trn were invested in equity funds.

30 institutional investors, with combined assets under management of about USD1trn, have sent a letter to companies of the Russell 1000 index, calling on them to accept the “new reality” of ESG (environmental, social and governance) risks, and to plan for it in their business planning. These issues cannot be considered areas “off the balance sheet,” the investors say. “They are rather concrete financial issues which represent both risks and opportunities for the long-term success of businesses,” they say. The Californian pension funds CalPERS and CalSTRS, which are among the signatories, had already announced last month that they had decided to better integrate ESG criteria into all of their investment decisions.

The alternative boutique BBVA & Partners (EUR200m in assets) from Saragossa is now wholly owned by BBVA Asset Management, which has been joined by its three partners, León Baltolomé, Pablo Gil and Juan Uguet, who had previously owned 30% of the former firm.Funds People also reports that the BBVA & Partners funds have been transferred to the Luxembourg Sicav from BBVA Durbana International Fund, which has a sales license for Spain. The funds include the BBVA & Partners Retorno Absoluto FIL (EUR21m), BBVA Partners Ahorro Dinámico, BBVA Partners Augustus, BBVA Partners Dynamic and BBVA Partners European Absolute Return.