Au bout d’enchères-marathon de 18 heures, le consortium animé par Centerbridge Partners et comprenant Paulson & Co ainsi que the Blackstone Group a remporté vendredi la chaîne hôtelière Extended Stay Inc moyennant 3,93 milliards de dollars en numéraire, selon les proches du dossier.The Wall Street Journal indique que le perdant a été un consortium d’investisseurs dirigé par Starwood Capital Group, qui avait proposé 3,88 milliards de dollars pour sortir Extended Stay de la protection de la loi sur les faillites.

Une récente étude de Greenwich Associates (lire notre dépêche du 13 avril) a permis d'établir que si les ETF sont le plus souvent considérés aux Etats-Unis comme un produit destiné principalement aux particuliers, ils sont de plus en plus utilisés par les investisseurs institutionnels, constate BlackRock dans la dernière livraison de son bulletin mensuel ETF Landscape. De fait, cette catégorie d’investisseurs a désormais reconnu que les ETF peuvent être utiles pour la titrisation du numéraire, la gestion de transition, la repondération ou l’investissement sur des actifs difficilement accessibles. De plus, s’ils n’ont investi que 14 % de leur encours dans les ETF, les institutionnels américains n’en pèsent pas moins près de la moitié des actifs sous gestion de ces produits.L'étude de Greewich Associates montre assez logiquement que le palmarès des émetteurs d’ETF est pour les institutionnels américains le même que pour l’ensemble du marché mondial, du moins en ce qui concerne les noms (lire notre article du 17 mai). Ainsi la marque iShares (Blackrock) arrive-t-elle en tête, mais avec une part de marché de 89 % (contre 46,4 % pour le monde entier), devant State Street Global Advisors avec 6°0 % (contre 14,4 %) et Vanguard avec 51 % (contre 9,9 %). Cela posé, les citations multiples sont possibles.Les promoteurs suivants dans la liste sont ProShares et Invesco, avec chacun 13 %, puis Direxion et Rydex avec 2 %.BlackRock rapporte que les éléments décisifs pour le choix d’investir dans des ETF de la part des institutionnels tiennent évidemment au montant des frais, mais aussi à la liquidité, à l’indice de référence, à l’historique de performance et à la réputation de l'émetteur.D’autre part, près de 55 % des institutionnels utilisant déjà des ETF ont l’intention d’augmenter leur allocation à ce tpe de produits.

En l’absence de signal de retournement à la hausse, le risque d’une baisse jusqu’à 3.000 points reste élevé

D’ici un an les gestions tablent sur un rebond de 16 % du CAC 40 et de 14 % du S&P 500. La Place parisienne perdrait 6 % en 2010

A horizon 6 mois, la prévision moyenne du taux de change, entre mai et juin, est tombée de 1,34 à 1,22

La moitié des gestions conservent leur portefeuille inchangé, tandis que la plupart des autres s’allègent en actions au bénéfice du crédit

En juin, les participants à l'enquête anticipent, en moyenne, une parité à 1,23 d'ici à 3 mois

La moitié des participants sont désormais neutres sur la classe d’actifs. La proportion de cash a fortement augmenté alors que la duration chute

L’Agefi note que pour faire face à une «demande énorme», venue notamment de l'étranger, le premier opérateur boursier indien, National Stock Exchange of India, prévoit de proposer aux investisseurs un nouveau système de ventes à découvert dans les prochaines semaines.

Le suisse Partners Group renforce sa présence à l’international avec la création d’un bureau au Moyen-Orient, qui sera localisé à Dubai, dans le Dubai International Financial Center.La forte croissance économique au Moyen-Orient, en Afrique du Nord et en Inde font de la zone un choix logique pour une implantation, estime Partners Group.

Henning Busch, Head of Institutional Sales Germany at Credit Suisse Germany since January 2008, has been appointed Head of Asset Management at Credit Suisse Germany, effective immediately. He will report to JC Perrig, CEO Asset Management for the EMEA/Switzerland region, and to Michael M. Rüdiger, CEO for Germany, Austria, Luxembourg & Central Europe at Credit Suisse. Busch replaces Axel Großkreutz, who was head of asset management on the board of Credit Suisse (Deutschland), who has asked to be transferred to the advisory board (Beirat), chaired by Herbert Henzler. He will serve as Senior Advisor Asset Management for Germany, and will focus on assisting selected major clients.

Natixis’ head of active equity Maurice Gravier has quit the French firm to join Swiss private bank Bordier & Cie, says Citywire. He will run the Swiss bank’s European equity fund, BO Fund Europe.

The Scottish management group Martin Currie has announced the appointment of Jeff Lombardi as senior vice president in charge of customer service for North America. Lombardi, who will begin in his new role on 21 June, will be based in New York, and will report to Jamie Sandison, head of Martin Currie North America. Lombardi previously worked at Citigroup, as global head of portfolio management for private banking.

In the ten years to 31 December 2009, a percentage of all net subscriptions in the United States recorded my Morningstar ranging from 55% (for active equities management) and 93% (for passive equities management) went to the least expensive quarter of all funds, according to a Vanguard study (“Costs Matter: Are Fund Investors Voting With Their Feet?»). Francis Kinniry, Jr., principal at Vanguard Investment Strategy Group, explains that the trend is partly due to the popularity and rising availability of ETF funds, and a rising number of low-cost actively-managed funds. Meanwhile, it is apparent that this preference is partly attributable to the growing influence of independent financial advisers and promoters of corporate retirement savings plans, as 90% of assets are invested via intermediaries who are extending their low-cost offerings. Kinniry points out that the volatile environment on financial markets has led investors to the realisation, firstly, that costs are an important element, and secondly, that they are a factor in the investment equation that can be brought under control. In addition to this, online information is more readily available, and transparency is increasing, while financial media are increasingly critical of fee levels.

In a statement, the French financial regulator, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) announced on Thursday, 27 May that from 1 July 2010, Bruno Gizard, deputy secretary general in charge of the savings investor, management and savings directorate, would be leaving the agency. Gizard, who will be retiring, will be replaced by Pauline Leclerc-Glorieux, currently head of the savings investor and savings product service. She will begin in her new role on 1 July 2010. Leclerc-Glorieux, a graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique, with a degree of Ingénieur des Mines, joined the management and savings service of the market operations commission in September 2002, and was appointed deputy to the head of the service in July 2003. With the creation of the AMF and the enlargement of the jurisdiction of the management and savings service, which became the savings investor and savings product service, Leclerc-Glorieux was appointed head of the service in August 2006. She will have remained in that position until 30 June 2010.

NewAlpha, the hedge fund incubator specialist affiliate of the OFI group, on Wednesday, 26 May announced the recruitment of Clarisse Anger as director of institutional clients at the firm. Until 2009, Anger served as head of hedge fund sales for Europe at Dexia Asset Management. In practice, NewAlpha allows institutionals to invest via a fund of incubated funds, to participate in their development in terms of both assets and structrure, and to take part in the growth of the management firm in question. The appointment of Anger, who began her career at the Banque du Louvre, coincides with the declared ambition of NewAlpha to widen the circle of investors in its incubator activities. In this role, the firm will officially announce the launch of a new incubation fund of funds, NAG 4, in a few days. In figures, the OFI affiliate says that it considers about 250 candidates per year, and has “opportunistically” selected only 14 since the foundation of the business in 2004, for a cumulative total of EUR400m.

Russell Investments has announced the appointment of Joseph Gelly as practice leader, investment outsourcing. In this newly-created position at Russell, Gelly, who will be based in Boston, will be responsible for developing Russell’s outsourcing activities. Gelly previously worked at Congress Asset Management, a management firm based in Boston.

According to statistics from VDOS Stochastics, Spanish securities funds as of 21 May had assets of nearly EUR160.51bn, which represents a decline of EUR4.27bn from the end of April. EUR2.51bn of this decline is due to net redemptions.

The German management firm Deka Immobilien has acquired an office complex in the Hague for EUR49m, for its open-ended real estate fund WestInvest InterSelect. The 18,700 square metre complex is the headquarters for the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO), a semi-governmental organisation to promote scientific research. The vendor is ASR Property Fund N.V., an affiliate of the insurer ASR Nederland.

The US attorney charged Kenneth Starr, an investment adviser who claimed to represent film stars and other celebrities, with wire fraud, money laundering and investment adviser fraud for allegedly helping himself to the client funds he was supposed to manage. The fraud covers USD30 million.Prosecutors also accused Andrew Stein, former president of the Manhattan city council, with filing false statements to the IRS and making false statements to a federal agent. Mr Stein is alleged to have received funds from Mr Starr’s enterprise.

Hedge fund manager Arthur Samberg and his former firm, Pequot Capital Management, yesterday reached a USD28m settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over allegations of insider trading, says the Financial Times.The settlement brings an end to the SEC’s investigation into allegations that Mr Samberg and Pequot made USD14.8m in gains from insider information about Microsoft’s earnings in 2001.

Morningstar has announced that its Morningstar 1000 Hedge Fund Index has posted returns of 0.7% in April, while the Morningstar MSCI Composite Index hedged for currency risks shows gains of 1.1%. Overall, the former shows gains of 2.2% for the first four months of this year, while the latter has gained 3.6%. The best-performing category in April was US small caps, with gains of 2.6% in April, followed by distressed securities, with 2.3%. However, the dedicated short bias strategy showed losses of 4.1% for the month, and 6.4% since the beginning of the year.

The German asset management firm Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investment GmbH on Thursday announced that the net asset value of its open-ended real estate fund Morgan Stanley P2 Value (DE000A0F6G89) had fallen by 6 cents, to EUR46.76 per share. This is largely due to a downward revision by independent experts of the value of the Flight Forum office complex, located in Eindhoven in the Netherlands. The redemption freeze in place for the fund was extended for a further 12-month period on 29 October.

Jean-Pierre Jouyet is continuing to campaign for a coordinated and powerful European response to ongoing concerns on the markets. Yesterday, he reiterated his call for the creation of a “European market regulation agency,” which would have clear powers of intervention in emergency situations, decision-making and action, and which would work in liaison with the European Commission, which operates on the basis of a qualified majority decision-making system. “The markets demand precise responses, which need to be harmonised throughout Europe as a whole. That’s why I insist that only a single European agency with strict powers of application would able to bring precise responses to questions such as whether it is opportune to regulate listing procedures; or whether orders should be allowed to remain on the order books for so long before they are settled, and if so, for how long; or whether orders, once settled, should be taxed.” The president of the French financial market regulator, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) was speaking at the 2010 conference of the AMF Scientific Council, dedicated to regulation of equities markets. Jouyet emphasized the need to create such a structure “as soon as possible.” “It is urgently needed by Europe,” he implored, “as member states and institutions are not able to react rapidly enough, meaning in the next month - and it should be no surprise that national reactions are becoming more vocal, due to the horror of the void” they are staring into. From this perspective, he continued, “French-German initiatives are more necessary than ever ... to propose a Euro zone governance plan,” and to adopt comparable measures “to combat short-selling of all shares, and particularly to strictly regulate the CDS markets.”

Sales of absolute and total return funds, which aim to achieve positive returns in all market conditions, have soared in Europe this year, says Lipper. In the first quarter, they attracted net inflows of EUR9.7bn compared to EUR11bn during the whole of last year. Total net assets in absolute/total return funds stand at EUR132.5bn as at March 2010. At their 2006 peak, assets totalled EUR179bn. Absolute return bond funds sold particularly well during the first quarter. Seven of the best-selling absolute return funds in the first quarter were bond funds. However, over a third of the 40+ new absolute return fund launches this year were mixed asset or asset allocation funds, according to Lipper. For investors, the attraction of the funds has been boosted by a combination of low interest rates, economic uncertainty and stock market volatility. Among product providers, hedge fund managers see absolute return funds as an opportunity to move into the mainstream mutual fund market. Though figures show that the most successful funds are from fund managers with a foot in both camps. Cross-border groups attracted the highest flows into their absolute return funds in the first quarter. However, on an individual country basis it was in the UK and Italy that these funds proved most popular. But in Germany and Belgium this year there were net redemptions.

In 2009, three asset management firms managed to puncture the stifling dominance of the ETF management giants, BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard, the Wall Street Journal reports. While Fidelity and Northern Trust were forced to abandon their efforts, Pimco (Allianz), Charles Schwab and ETF Securities (ETFS) succeeded in carving out a place for themselves in this market – and others, such as T. Rowe Price, Legg Mason and Goldman Sachs, are hoping to follow in their footsteps. ETFS owes a part of its success (USD1.5bn in 4 funds) to good timing with the launch of its physical gold and platinum products. Charles Schwab used a successful subterfuge with a promotion of free online trades on its site. Lastly, Pimco manifestly touched a sensitive nerve with two products, the Pimco Enhanced Short Maturity Strategy Enhanced Short Maturity Strategy ETF (MINT), and the Pimco 1-5 Year US TIPS Index ETF (STPZ), which raised USD1.27bn. But its eight other products have assets of only USD51m, or less.

The California pension fund CalPERS (California Public Employees’ Retirement System) has announced the launch of an online service from July, which will allow managers to use the internet to submit their proposals directly, without needing to go through placement agents. CalPERS is also planning to hold online seminars in autumn, to introduce the new services and its full range of offerings.

Managed accounts, which have seen a rebound in popularity in the wake of the financial turbulence of 2008, are still popular with investors. “We think that the managed account segment will continue to grow strongly in the short term, and more moderately in the mid- to long-term,” says Joanne Job, an analyst at Moody’s who has recently published a report on the subject (“Hedge Funds: Investing Through Managed Accounts”). In a managed account structure, where the hedge fund manager is authorised to make trading operations for the account, while the account holder retains ownership and control of the assets, the level of transparency is higher, and the investor is generally sheltered from market downturns. The report finds, however, that the growth of managed accounts has been limited in the past due to the higher costs associated with this type of instrument, and to operational risks. With the normalisation of the market, these factors may once again become important.

Aberdeen has appointed Pia Michelsson head of business development, Finland to further strengthen its business in the country. In the banking industry, she previously worked as a Deputy CEO of Kaupthing Finnish Branch, after heading the asset management team. Prior that, she worked 15 years with Credit Agricole Indosuez as head of institutional business development in Finland. This reinforcement of the Nordic team coincides with Aberdeen celebrating its 10 year anniversary in Finland. Today the asset manager manages around EUR1.7 billion on behalf of Finnish clients.

The German affiliate of the Standard Life insurance group announced on Thursday that it is actively promoting open-ended funds from Standard Life Investments (SLI) in the country. 18 sub-funds of the Sicav have been licensed for sale in Germany since May 2007, and have already been available for years on the Moventum, Metzler Fund Xchange and Frankfurter Fondsbank platforms. Standard Life Deutschland will now offer intermediaries assistance with sales of these funds, including personalised advising and sales literature in German, as well as a new dedicated website (www.standardlifeinvestments.de).