Les transactions immobilières reprennent en Europe
Les investissements ont crû de 26 % à 20,6 milliards d’euros au quatrième trimestre. Pour DTZ, un rebond de 80 % du marché est possible en 2010
03/02/2010
Amundi becomes the largest SRI asset manager in France
With EUR8bn in assets, Amundi Asset Management, the management firm birthed by the marriage of Crédit Agricole Asset Management and Société Générale Asset Management, has taken its place as the top manager of socially responsible investment (SRI) products in France, Novethic reports. The new entity far outstrips the second-largest manager of these products, Natixis Asset Management, and the third-largest, Allianz GI France, whose assets total over EUR3bn each. Dexia AM is in fourth place, with slightly under EUR3bn, followed by BNP Paribas IP, which has about EUR2bn in assets. Novethic also notes that Macif Gestion, Axa IM and OFI AM have entered the top 10. Four new French firms have also arrived on this market (CCR AM, Edmond de Rothschild AM, IT Asset Management and Mandarine Gestion), while two foreign asset managers have begun offering their funds in France (F&C Investments and First State Investments). In rankings of firms by strongest growth in assets, excluding conversions of existing funds to SRI, Macif Gestion takes first place, followed by Robeco SAM, Allianz GI, Natixis AM and Dexia AM. The market is expected to grow further: as Novethic observes, “the impact on SRI of several mergers now underway -- Fortis IM with BNP Paribas IP; UFG with LFP; Prado Epargne Gestion and Agicam -- is not yet known.”
03/02/2010
State Street recrute un patron mondial du "cash business"
Managing direcor et head de l’activité private label cash management chez BlackRock, Barry F. X. Smith a été recruté par State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) comme global head cash business. Il aura à ce poste nouvellement créé la responsabilité de quelque 500 milliards de dollars, avec la distribution, le pricing, le développement de produits et le service à la clientèle. Son poste lui permettra de coiffer les fonds monétaires de SSgA, gestionnaire dont l’encours total représente 1.900 milliards de dollars.L’intéressé, qui a rejoint le 1er février, est subordonné à James Kase, head of global sales & marketing. Il travaillera en étroite coopération avec Steve Meier executive vice president et global cash CIO.
03/02/2010
State Street recrute un patron mondial du "cash business"
Managing direcor et head de l’activité private label cash management chez BlackRock, Barry F. X. Smith a été recruté par State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) comme global head cash business. Il aura à ce poste nouvellement créé la responsabilité de quelque 500 milliards de dollars, avec la distribution, le pricing, le développement de produits et le service à la clientèle. Son poste lui permettra de coiffer les fonds monétaires de SSgA, gestionnaire dont l’encours total représente 1.900 milliards de dollars.L’intéressé, qui a rejoint le 1er février, est subordonné à James Kase, head of global sales & marketing. Il travaillera en étroite coopération avec Steve Meier executive vice president et global cash CIO.
03/02/2010
State Street recrute un patron mondial du "cash business"
Managing direcor et head de l’activité private label cash management chez BlackRock, Barry F. X. Smith a été recruté par State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) comme global head cash business. Il aura à ce poste nouvellement créé la responsabilité de quelque 500 milliards de dollars, avec la distribution, le pricing, le développement de produits et le service à la clientèle. Son poste lui permettra de coiffer les fonds monétaires de SSgA, gestionnaire dont l’encours total représente 1.900 milliards de dollars.L’intéressé, qui a rejoint le 1er février, est subordonné à James Kase, head of global sales & marketing. Il travaillera en étroite coopération avec Steve Meier executive vice president et global cash CIO.
03/02/2010
State Street recrute un patron mondial du "cash business"
Managing direcor et head de l’activité private label cash management chez BlackRock, Barry F. X. Smith a été recruté par State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) comme global head cash business. Il aura à ce poste nouvellement créé la responsabilité de quelque 500 milliards de dollars, avec la distribution, le pricing, le développement de produits et le service à la clientèle. Son poste lui permettra de coiffer les fonds monétaires de SSgA, gestionnaire dont l’encours total représente 1.900 milliards de dollars.L’intéressé, qui a rejoint le 1er février, est subordonné à James Kase, head of global sales & marketing. Il travaillera en étroite coopération avec Steve Meier executive vice president et global cash CIO.
03/02/2010
Natixis AM recruits Philippe Berthelot
In January, Philippe Berthelot (CFA) joined Natixis Asset Management as director of corporate and structured credit management. Berthelot joined Axa Investment Managers (Paris) in 1998, and was appointed director of European credit management in January 2009. In his new role, Berthelot will be responsible for the corporate management (cash and CDO), ABS, and structured credit units.
03/02/2010
State Street hires a global head for "cash business"
Managing director et head de l’activité private label cash management chez BlackRock, Barry F. X. Smith a été recruté par State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) comme global head cash business. Il aura à ce poste nouvellement créé la responsabilité de quelque 500 milliards de dollars, avec la distribution, le pricing, le développement de produits et le service à la clientèle. Son poste lui permettra de coiffer les fonds monétaires de SSgA, gestionnaire dont l’encours total représente 1.900 milliards de dollars.L’intéressé, qui a rejoint le 1er février, est subordonné à James Kase, head of global sales & marketing. Il travaillera en étroite coopération avec Steve Meier executive vice president et global cash CIO.
03/02/2010
Jupiter chief steps back from CIO role
Jupiter Asset Management has announced the appointment of John Chatfeild-Roberts as chief investment officer. Since 2000, Edward Bonham Carter has combined the CIO role with his work as chief executive officer. John Chatfeild-Roberts, who joined Jupiter in 2001 as head of the Jupiter Merlin Fund of Funds Team, will take on the role from 3 February 2010. His position as head of the Jupiter Merlin Fund of Funds Team will remain unchanged. Edward Bonham Carter, chief executive of Jupiter Asset Management, said: «this will enable me to have a greater focus on developing Jupiter’s growing business and extending its international reach.”
03/02/2010
Managers at Artemis agree to four-year lock-in
Investment Week reports that a group of 17 managers at Artemis, which has recently been taken over by the American firm AMG (see Newsmanagers of 1 February) have agreed to a four-year lock-in period. They have agreed not to leave the firm or to sell their shares in the firm during this time, until 2014. AMG is rumoured to have paid USD150m to USD200m for its 51% stake in Artemis.
03/02/2010
Record inflows for Investec AM
Assets under management at the South African investment firm Investec Asset Management as of 31 December 2009 totalled a record GBP41bn, thanks to record inflows of GBP3.7bn in the first nine months of the year. Since their low point in March last year, assets under management at Investec have risen 43%, Investment Week reports.
03/02/2010
Management reshuffle at Bansabadell Inversión
Antonia Saiz, who was head of mixed fund management at BBVA Asset Management, has been recruited by Bansabadell Inversión as director of investment strategy. Meanwhile, Xavier Blanquet, who was head of a team of six equities analysts, has been appointed as director of client and investment product strategy. Funds People relays reports in Expansión that Cirus Andreu, deputy CEO of Sabadell and director of investment, savings products and research, says the bank is no longer planning to sell off its asset management affiliate, but will instead seek opportunities for an acquisition in this area.
03/02/2010
Bestinver, Metagestión and Mutua Madrileña top rankings for 15-year performance
According to a study by Pablo Fernández, professor of finance at the ESE business school, based on Inverco statistics, Bestinver (an affiliate of Acciona) is the top Spanish management firm for returns in the past 15 years, with average performance of 12%, followed by Metagestión, with 9.9%, and Mutua Madrileña with 4%, Cinco Días reports. The worst-performing investment firms lost money; for example, Acapital Finanzas (-3.6%).
03/02/2010
No charges against Madoff's UK firm
The Serious Fraud Office will press no charges against the UK arm of Bernard Madoff’s business dealings or its directors, writes the Financial Times.
03/02/2010
Fund managers urged to toughen up on bankers' bonuses
Lord Myners, the City minister, has written to fund managers urging them to re-examine the bonus payments they are planning to distribute to bankers, says the Financial Times. He asked the fund managers, such as Schroders and Fidelity, to specify what actions they had taken to “engage with the banks in relation to their bonus decisions”.
03/02/2010
Inverco expects popularity of funds to bounce back
Mariano Rabadán, president of the Inverco association of asset management firms, has stated that the savings rate for Spanish households increased to 20% in 2009 from 11% in 2008, but that the increase profited bank savings, which increased by EUR38bn, despite a fall in returns (1.79% for the two years deposit at the end of December, compared with 5.15% in October 2008), Cinco Días reports. In contrast, securities funds saw net redemptions of EUR11.64bn, though in the past ten years these funds earned average returns of 4.93%. Inverco is predicting an increase of 10.1% in assets this year, to EUR179bn, while the increase for the asset management sector as a whole (including foreign asset management firms and Sicav funds) may total 9.3% compared with their levels at the end of 2009, to EUR246.25bn. Net subscriptions may total EUR12bn, the association hopes. Rabadán also welcomes government proposals to raise the retirement age to 67 from 65, and claims it is the most important and sensible proposal of the past 15 years.
03/02/2010
ETF industry in rapid transformation
State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) has published its 2009 panorama of the ETF market and outlooks for the development of the sector in 2010. The SSgA synthesis observes that 2009 was the third consecutive year in which net inflows to ETFs topped USD100bn, as investors pulled out of US large caps and global equities from developed markets to increase their exposure to ETFs which provide access to defensive asset classes such as gold, investment grade corporate bonds, and inflation-linked US Treasury bonds. In 2010, assets in ETFs may top USD1trn, compared with an estimated USD767bn in 2009. Some themes which emerged in 2009 are expected to continue to structure the industry in 2010, including, among others, tactical use of ETFs by investors, an end to growth for inverse and leveraged ETFs, continued development of fixed income ETFs, and the emergence of actively-managed ETFs.
03/02/2010
Santander to distribute funds made in Latin America and Europe
Sapin’s Santander has created a position for a director of development for asset management in Hong Kong, and appointed Alexander de Laiglesia, who has been present in Hong Kong for several months, Asian Investor reports. De Laiglesia will be in charge of sales to local fund managers and distributors in Asia of funds from Santander Asset Management (EUR120bn), produced in Latin America and Europe.
03/02/2010
Madoff: SEC lawsuit dismissed
The federal judge Louis Stanton on Tuesday dismissed a civil complaint by the US Securities and Exchange Commission against a New York broker -Cohmad Securities Corporation- it accused of wrongfully channelling investors into Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, says the Financial Times. The judge said that there was not sufficient evidence that the three top employees of the firm knew of Mr Madoff’s scheme.
03/02/2010
SEC requests information from Paulson & Co
Paulson & Co, a hedge fund that made billions of dollars betting against subprime mortgages via CDOs, has received a request for information from the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with an investigation into complex securities at the heart of the financial crisis, according to people familiar with the matter cited by the Financial Times. The people said they believed that Paulson & Co was not a target of any investigation.
03/02/2010
ETF assets may triple in five years
According to a survey by Handelsblatt of the ten largest ETF providers, assets in these products in Europe may increase from EUR156bn at the end of 2009 to EUR200bn as of 31 December 2010, and EUR480bn in five years.
03/02/2010
Le paysage des ETF en pleine mutation
State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) vient de publier son panorama 2009 des ETF ainsi que les perspectives d'évolution du secteur en 2010. La synthèse de SSgA souligne notamment que 2009 a été la troisième année consécutive où la collecte nette d’ETF a dépassé la barre des 100 milliards de dollars, les investisseurs délaissant les grosses capitalisations américaines et les actions internationales des pays développés pour accroître leur exposition aux ETF donnant accès aux classes d’actifs défensives, y compris l’or, les obligations corporate en catégorie d’investissement et les titres du Trésor américain indexés sur l’inflation.En 2010, l’encours des ETF pourrait dépasser la barre des 1.000 milliards de dollars contre 767 milliards (estimation) en 2009. Certains thèmes apparus en 2009 devraient continuer de structurer l’industrie en 2010, entre autres l’utilisation tactique des ETF par les investisseurs, l’arrêt de la croissance des ETF inversés et à effet de levier, la poursuite du développement des ETF fixed income, ou encore l'émergence des ETF actifs.
03/02/2010
2009 sets records for subscriptions to retail funds
2009 is the highest year on record for fund sales, with GBP25.8 billion in net retail sales - 45% more than 2000 (GBP17.7 billion), the previous best year - and more than six times the level achieved in 2008 (GBP3.8 billion). 2009 is also highest year end to date for funds under management - GBP480.8 billion, exceeding the previous highest year end, 2007 (GBP467.0 billion). Bond sales dominated the first part of the year but Equities experienced a resurgence in the second half. Bonds finished the year 36% ahead of Equities, with net retail sales of GBP9.9 billion, compared to GBP7.3 billion for Equities for the year as a whole.
03/02/2010
Skandia refocuses Skandia UK Best Ideas Fund
Concerned by the disappointing relative performance of the fund when markets rose strongly last year, SIG CIO James Millard and his team have been heavily scrutinising the line-up and blending of the managers to ensure the fund is better placed to deliver more consistent outperformance. As a result, the fund will now have exposure to the following managers – Audrey Ryan at Aegon; Jacob de Tusch-Lec at Artemis; Richard Plackett at BlackRock; Luke Kerr at Old Mutual; Richard Buxton at Schroders, Hector Kilpatrick at SVM and George Luckraft at AXA Framlington. Out of the UK Best Ideas line up goes the Ignis Cartesian duo of Andrew Kelly and David Stevenson; Jupiter’s Anthony Nutt and River & Mercantile’s Dan Hanbury. SIG is also dropping Hanbury from Its Global Best Ideas Fund and replacing him with Luke Kerr from Old Mutual Asset Management. Separately, Skandia investment Group’s long / short equity fund – the Skandia UK Strategic Best Ideas Fund – is reducing the number of managers in the line-up to seven.
03/02/2010
Aberdeen merges funds
Money Marketing reports that Aberdeen is merging its British and European opportunity-driven funds with the objective of improving the effectiveness of its product range. The British Opportunities fund, with GBP42m in assets, will be merged into the GBP119m growth fund, which will be renamed Aberdeen UK Equity Fund. The EUR5.4m European fund will be merged into the European growth fund (GBP224m), to give birth to the European Equity Fund. Total management fees will be reduced from 1.9% to 1.63% for the UK Opportunities fund, and from 1.9% to 1.65% for the European Opportunities fund.
03/02/2010
Commerzbank completes sale of Privatinvest Bank
Commerzbank announced on 2 February that it has completed the sale of its 74% stake in the capital of the Austrian Privatinvest Bank to the Cantonal Bank of Zürich. The Austrian bank, with 50 staff, had assets under management of EUR600m as of the end of June 2009.
03/02/2010
Dan Draper to join Credit Suisse
According to Index Universe, Dan Draper, former global head of ETFs at Lyxor, is to join Credit Suisse. Separately, it was reported that Andrea Morresi, head of European sales at iShares, has resigned from the firm.
03/02/2010
Market infrastructure standards in for revision
The Committee for Payment and Settlement Systems (CPSS) and the Technical Committee of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) on 2 February announced that they have launched a complete examination of existing standards for market infrastructures, such as payment and settlement systems. Three sets of standards will form particular focus points: basic principles for payment systems (2001), recommendations for payment systems (2001/2), and recommendations for central chambers of compensation (2004). Market infrastructures have generally withstood the financial turbulence with success, but in light of hte time which has passed since the publication of these standards, the committees considered it useful to look over them and to modify them if necessary with the aim of strengthening them. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank will also participate in the process, which is a part of a larger effort by the Financial Stability Committee to reduce risk in the global financial system. A draft of the revised standards will be released for consultation in early 2011. A statement adds that the two committees have already made considerable progress in the revision of the 2004 standards for central chambers of compensation, and that a consultation document will be released in the next few months. The accelerated pace of the examination is related to the recent opening of chambers of compensation for OTC derivatives and of trade repositories.
03/02/2010
Vontobel signs up to UN-PRI
The Swiss Vontobel group announced on 1 February that last month it signed up to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). The move emphasizes the increasingly central place that the group devotes to sustainable development issues in its investment process. The Principles for Responsible Investment were established by an international group of institutional investors in response to the growing importance of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues at businesses for investment processes.