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15/09/2009

AIFM: Private equity supports idea of an impact study

The European Venture Capital Association (EVCA) has welcomed a pledge by the chairman of the European Socialist party (PES), Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, supporting a genuine consultation with the industry, as well as an impact study of the European directive on alternative management. The association has also said it is in favour of the establishment of similar regulations for all, and of increased differentiation of asset classes and strengthened base regulations.
15/09/2009

SG Private Banking announces partnership to offer advising for art collections

SG Private Banking announced on 14 September that it is teaming up with 1858 Limited Art Advisory to meet a growing interest on the part of high net worth private clients in art, and is preparing to offer international clients art advising services. “Art specialists at 1858 Limited Art Advisory will advise and assist clients of the private bank in all impartiality and discretion on various aspects of the management of their artistic wealth portfolios,” says a statement from SG Private Banking. The range of services will include selection, estimation and trading of artworks, so as to achieve significant reductions in transactional costs; advising on purchase and sales of artworks; constitution and valuation of art collections; logistical management of expeditions, restoration, hanging and storage of artworks; representation at auction houses; organisations of private sales; and advising on philanthropy.
15/09/2009

ERAFP preparing an SRI SMB fund

In partnership with EDHEC, the French civil servants pension fund ERAFP (Etablissement de retraite additionnelle de la Fonction publique) is working on an SRI index of SMBs, based on risk budget rather than capitalisation, Responsible Investor reports. Once the index has been created, ERAFP will launch a RFP to manage a fund worth a few tens of millions of Euros, which would use the index as a benchmark, says CEO Philippe Desfossés, who adds that ERAFP is likely to open the index to other asset management firms.
15/09/2009

Jim Supple promoted to head of distribution at Fidelity IIS

Mutual Fund Wire reports that Peter Cieszko, president of Fidelity Investment Institutional Services (FIIS), has appointed Jim Supple as head of distribution. He was previously national sales manager at the business, which has recently recruited Scott Couton from Evergreen Investments as its new head of product management. FIIS serves about 4,500 clients with assets of over USD100bn.
15/09/2009

Appointment at Aviva Investors France

Following the arrival of Jean-François Boulier as chairman of the board at Aviva Investors France and a change in the organisation of the business, Pascal Heurtault, currently head of equities at the firm, has been appointed CIO.
15/09/2009

JP Morgan builds platform aimed at hedge funds

J.P. Morgan has announced the creation of the Prime-Custody Solutions Group, a team which will provide integrated prime brokerage and custody services, largely to hedge fund managers. The service will be headed by Devon George-Eghdami, who was previously head of the Hybrid Capital Trading unit. George-Eghdami, based in New York, will report to both Michael Minikes, CEO of J.P. Morgan Clearing Corp. for Prime Services, and Sandie O’Connor, global head of financing & markets for the Treasury & Securities Services division. J.P. Morgan explains that the establishment of the new services comes at a time when hedge funds are launching long-only funds and are seeking structures which would allow them to domicile certain assets with custodians, while traditional asset management firms are starting up long/short strategies which need to be financed by a prime broker.
15/09/2009

Fidelity announces bonuses for 300 employees

Fidelity Investments has disclosed stock-based awards totaling USD268 million to fewer than 300 people, which is less than 1 percent of its work force, according to the Boston Business Journal. The newspaper thinks that Fidelity needs to make happy a senior group of leaders that have joined the company in the past two years.
15/09/2009

Jean-François Boulier becomes chairman of Aviva Investors France

The CEO and CIO of Aviva Investors France, Jean-François Boulier, will become chairman of the board at Aviva Investors France from 21 September. He replaces Eric Duval de la Guierce, who will continue his activities at Aviva Investors France as advisor to Alain Dromer, chief executive of Aviva Investors, and to Boulier. Duval de la Guierce will remain a member of the executive board at Aviva Investors until the end of 2009, and will continue to be a member of the executive board at Aviva France until June 2010. Boulier, for his part, will become a member of the executive board at Aviva Investors, and will remain a member of the executive board at Aviva France. Boulier has confirmed to Newsmanagers that his objective is to continue the ambitious plan put in place globally by Aviva Investors a few months ago. “We have two major areas of development,” he explains: “management on behalf of third parties outside the firm, and internationalisation of the firm’s activities.”
15/09/2009

Christian Desbois leaves UFG IM

Christian Desbois, currently CEO of UFG Investment Managers, has been appointed CFO of Crédit Mutuel Nord Europe (CMNE). He will retain his duties at UFG IM, an affiliate of CMNE, until the end of the month, a statement announcing his appointment states. Then, a new organisation will be put in place, as part of the merger process between UFG and La Française des Placements. Desbois joined the UFG group in 2002. He was previously CEO of CPR Gestion, and also worked at Fimagest and Fortis Investment Management.
15/09/2009

Optimism returns at multi-management firms

Optimism has returned to multi-management firms, with the confidence index at 0.61, a level not seen since mid-2007, according to the most recent edition of a quarterly survey by Seeds Finance of managers of funds of hedge funds (Consensus Hedge Fund, Q2 2009, no. 30). “The mood is optimistic, but not euphoric,” says Seeds Finance, as this level corresponds to the average observed since the creation of the indicator in 2003, while the highest level observed was in late 2006-early 2007. Managers remain prudent, but the return of their appetite for risk is revealing itself, and is also resulting in an increasingly marked regain of interest in directional bets, with a bias towards long/short equity strategies, which now represent 20% of portfolios. Average gross exposure to this strategy is up strongly to 116% after record lows at the end of last year. At 10%, allocation to emerging markets equities remains low, but more than 40% of managers are planning to increase the weight of this region. The Seeds Finance survey also finds that there has been a net regain of interest in arbitrage strategies, to take advantage of a return of liquidity, as well as in credit arbitrage and event-driven distressed. “Managers are cautiously repositioning themselves on these strategies, fearing a disappearance of liquidity late this year,” Seeds Finance explains. However, long term CTAs, whose performance has been poor since the beginning of the year, are no longer popular with managers.
15/09/2009

T. Rowe Price launches a US large caps fund

On Monday, the US management firm T. Rowe Price announced the launch of the US Large Cap Core Fund, a sub-fund of its Luxembourg Sicav. The US large caps product has already been granted sales licenses for several European countries, including the United Kingdom. The portfolio of 50-75 positions will be supplemented by “best ideas” from more than 30 analysts, following a strictly “bottom-up” approach (stock-picking), and managed by Jeff Rottinghaus. As of 30 June, assets at T. Rowe Price in US large caps represented over USD133bn.
15/09/2009

Performance commissions on the rise

Nearly two-thirds of global fund managers, with USD7,000bn assets under management, expect to see greater use of performance fees, while three-quarters expect traditional management charges to fall in the next few months, according to research from Skandia Investment Group cited by Financial Times Fund Management. The trend comes at a time when the asset management industry understands it needs to align itself better with investors’ interests than it has in the past.
15/09/2009

Strong net subscriptions in July

According to statistics from Lipper Feri, net subscriptions to funds in Europe in July totalled EUR46.6bn, compared with net outflows of nearly EUR9bn in June. In the first seven months of the year, total net subscriptions come to EUR102bn, Handelsblatt reports. Good results in July are due to equities and bond funds, whose net inflows totalled EUR12.3bn and EUR15.7bn respectively, meaning that assets nearly doubled in June for the former and quadrupled for the latter class of funds. Money market funds saw inflows of EUR16.4bn.
15/09/2009

Espa launches a fund of government bonds from central and eastern Europe

Erste Sparinvest (Espa) has opened subscriptions until 9 October to a target-date bond fund which will be launched on 12 October, entitled Espa New Europe Basket. The Austrian-registered fund will invest entirely in government bonds or in state-guaranteed securities from new EU member states or approved candidates for EU membership (such as Croatia and Turkey), and will retain the bonds, which must be rated at least BBB, until maturity. Espa is offering investors fixed returns of at least 5.25% per year. Espa estimates that the product is a fund “which will not cause any headaches.” The asset management firm for Erste Bank and the Austrian savings banks estimates that the economic situation and outlooks in the countries of central and eastern Europe have been subject to a much too severe treatment by the markets. The region is expected to return to positive growth in third quarter 2009, due to the benefits of EU and IMF assistance. In addition, the prospect of EU accession will cause optimism for investors in some countries. Characteristics Name ESPA NEW EUROPE BASKET 2014 ISIN Code AT0000A0EXL1 Subscription period 14/09/2009-09/10/2009 Fund launch 12/10/2009 Minimal returns on securities in the portfolio 5.75% Minimal distribution 5.25% Maturity 10/10/2014 Front-end fee 2.00% Management fee 0.50% Exit penalty 0.50%
15/09/2009

AHL to manage a UCITS III fund for Man and Dexion

Man Investments has announced that with Dexion Capital Group, it is launching the Man AHL Aiversity fund, a trend-following fund which complies with the UCITS III directive, and which will be managed by AHL (USD20.4bn in assets as of the end of March), an affiliate of Man. The product, which is intended as a diversification brick, is aimed at qualified British institutional investors. It is denominated in pounds Sterling and minimal subscription is set at GBP100. The Man AHL Diversity fund will be exposed to more than 90 markets worldwide, on 29 markets which are open 24 hours a day, and the management team will be active in all asset classes, from currencies and fixed income to soft commodities and metals.
15/09/2009

Thomson Reuters launches indices

Thomson Reuters is bringing to the market its own family of 800 indices, covering some 44 countries, 18 regions and 10 business sectors, according to the Financial Times Fund Management. The group will use a liquidity filter to ensure each index represents the market as a fund manager might actually hold it.
15/09/2009

Financial crisis isn't over, according to two thirds of institutional managers

A survey by FTI Consulting of 153 institutional investors in 15 countries, who manage a total of more than USD2.8trn, finds that 64% of specialists at these entities estimate that the financial crisis is not over, while 31% think that the worst has passed, and 5% have no opinion, fondsprofessionell reports. Australian and US asset managers are the most pessimistic, with 80% and 76%, respectively, of the opinion that the crisis is not finished. In Europe and Asia, the percentages of pessimists are 59% and 62%.
15/09/2009

Financial crisis has cost millionaires

According to an annual survey by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), the financial crisis in 2008 caused the number of millionaires in the world to fall to about 9 million, compared with 11 million the previous year, while households with financial savings of under USD100,000 posted slight increases in their wealth, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. In total, assets managed for clients contracted in one year by 11.7%, to USD92.4trn, with a 21.8% fall in the United States to USD29.3trn. The “established” wealthy, those with assets of at least USD5m, saw the heaviest losses, with -22%, bringing their assets to USD17.7trn.
15/09/2009

Growth in portfolio management

Funds People reports that discretionary portfolio management services as of the end of July had assets of EUR56.59bn (compared with EUR14.9bn in funds), which represents a 2.3% increase in July, and a 6.8% increase since the beginning of the year. 91.8% of this total is managed on behalf of Portuguese residents, and it is 85% invested in bonds. The leaders in this market are Caixagest with EUR18.37bn and a market share of 32.5%, F&C Portugal (EUR17.89bn and 31.6% market share), and ESAF GP (EUR9.27bn and 16.4%).
15/09/2009

UK to open access to hedge funds to retail investors

The UK is pushing ahead with plans to open up hedge funds to retail investors, in spite of 18 months of silence and a growing European backlash against the hedge fund industry, reveals the Financial Times Fund Management. The Financial Services Authority has told FTfm that Faifs (funds of alternative investment funds) are alive and that it intends to publish finalised rules for their operation before the end of this year.
15/09/2009

Net subscriptions at 44 out of 85 management firms

As of the end of August, 85 asset management firms which disclose information about their subscription and redemption volumes to the Inverco association shows net inflows since the beginning of the year, Funds People reports. The top three places in the rankings go to Ibercaja Gestión (see Newsmanagers of 2 September) with EUR528.6m in the first eight months of 2009, followed by Invercaixa Gestión (EUR464.36m) and Credit Suisse Gestión (EUR348.1m). Funds People also notes that since the beginning of this year, 35 funds have attracted more than EUR100m each in Spain, for total net subscriptions of EUR10.04bn. Of this total, 18 are bond funds (most of them products specialised in corporate bonds), while 13 are guaranteed funds. These 35 funds account for about 10% of total assets in Spain, where there are about 2,700 funds in total. The fund which shows the strongest subscriptions is the FC Garantia RF 15 from La Caixa, with EUR892m. BBVA, La Caixa and Santander are the three firms with the most funds among the top 35 for sales, with 9, 7 and 5 products, respectively.
14/09/2009

"Se développer vers les conseillers en gestion de patrimoine et la clientèle privée nous intéresse beaucoup"

Activité chargée chez OFI AM... L'établissement, qui vient d'anonncer son entrée au capital de Prim’ Finance à hauteur de 33,37%, compte également donner vie à des projets majeurs comme l'élargissement de sa clientèle, le développement de certaines gestions et de certains fonds. En étant résolumment positionnée comme "créateur d'alpha"', comme nous l'a confirmé Thierry Callault, son directeur général délégué.
14/09/2009

The Hartford réorganise sa distribution

The Hartford Financial Services Group a annoncé la création d’une nouvelle structure, Hartford Life Distributors (HLD) qui regroupera les activités de vente et de distribution de ses produits d’investissement et de retraite. Cela se traduit par la centralisation des unités commerciales internes et externes, des équipes de marketing et de soutien, ainsi que des groupe de suivi stratégique de la clientèle et du développement pour les mutual funds, les produits 401 (K) et les programmes d'épargne universitaire (529). Ces activités représentent 25 milliards de dollars de dépôts pour les 12 mois au 30 juin et emploient sur le terrain une force de vente de 240 personnes.HLD sera dirigée par Kevin Connor, executive vice president, qui était jusqu'à présent responsable du marketing, du suivi de la clientèle et du développement pour les produits d’investissement et de retraite.
14/09/2009

Simon Ellis devient directeur du retail chez LGIM

L’ancien patron de la multigestion de Fidelity entre 2006 et 2009 rejoint Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) au poste de managing director pour l’activité retail, rapporte Investment Week.
14/09/2009

Les Cosmen et CVC ont le feu vert pour éplucher les comptes de National Express

Le board de National Express a autorisé la famille asturienne Cosmen et le capital investisseur CVC Capital Partners à pratiquer une due diligence sur les comptes de l’entreprise, et l’autorité britannique de surveillance des fusions-acquisitions a repoussé la date du dépôt des offres de vendredi 11 septembre 18 heures au 25 septembre, rapporte Cinco Días. D’ici là, le consortium pourra décider s’il maintient ou non son offre de 5 livres par action. En cas de succès de l’opération, les Cosmen et CVC envisagent de rétrocéder certains actifs de National Express à Stagecoach.
14/09/2009

Quatre millions de livres pour redresser Candover

Malcolm Fallen, le nouveau CEO de Candovers Investments, s’est vu accorder un ensemble d’incitations de 4 millions de livres pour redresser le capital investisseur, rapporte The Sunday Times. Il était précédemment CEO de l’opérateur de télécommunications KCOM et a pris son nouveau poste la semaine dernière, avec pour mission de négocier une solution pour le fonds 2008 de Candover, qui sera probablement fermé après avoir été incapable en mars de tenir un engagement d’un milliard d’euros. Les partenaires qui avaient promis 2 milliards d’euros seront probablement autorisés à ne pas donner suite, sans pénalités.
14/09/2009

Nils Bolmstrand prend la tête de SIG

Skandia Investment Group (SIG, environ 50 milliards de livres d’encours) a annoncé vendredi la nomination comme CEO avec effet immédiat de Nils Bolmstrand, qui était responsable du développement de produits, de la distribution et des relations avec les gestionnaires à l’international. Cette nomination fait suite à la démission surprise de Jamie McLeod, qui avait fondé Skandia Investment Management voici sept ans. SIG a été créée en octobre 2007.
14/09/2009

Mediobanca s'intéresse à la banque d'investissement de Sal. Oppenheim

Mediobanca procède actuellement à une «due diligence» de la division banque d’investissement de Sal. Oppenheim. Cette activité n’intéresse pas la Deutsche Bank, qui se focalise plutôt sur la gestion de fortune et la banque privée de l'établissement germano-luxembourgeois (130 milliards d’euros d’encours), rapporte le Financial Times.Selon les proches du dossier, Mediobanca penchera probablement pour le recrutement d'équipes plutôt que pour la reprise de toute l’activité de banque d’investissement de Sal. Oppenheim, qui emploie 400 personnes. Apparemment, la banque italienne n’en reprendrait qu’un petit nombre.
14/09/2009
Fonds

Catella lance un fonds immobilier "santé"

Catella Real Estate lance le premier fonds immobilier offert au public en Allemagne à être spécialiste de la santé (cliniques, centres médicaux, maisons du 3ème âge, bureaux et logistique pour le secteur de la santé). Le Focus HealthCare (FHC) investira oprioritairement outre-Rhin et l’objectif est d’arriver à 1 milliard d’euros d’ici à fin 2014, les investissements s’effectuant dans des actifs d’une valeur de 5-30 millions d’euros. L’objectif de performance se situe à 5-6 % par an. La souscription minimale est fixée à 20.000 euros et les retraits sont plafonnés à 50.000 euros par jour jusqu’au 5ème mois. La commission de gestion se situe à 1,25 % et la pénalité de sortie ressort à 1 %. Les trois premiers investissements ont été effectués en Allemagne du Nord, en Bavière et en Autriche pour un montant de 53 millions d’euros.
Fonds

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