La surprise réservée par la Fed entraîne un resserrement des spreads de crédit
L'indice principal synthétique iTraxx de CDS en euros s'est resserré de 10 points de base la semaine dernière, ce qui a profité à Lafarge
La Bourse de Tokyo profite de l’envolée des actions pour diversifier son offre
Le Tokyo Stock Exchange prévoit de lancer un nouvel indice actions qui se concentre sur le retour sur capitaux et les aspects de gouvernance
La sortie de récession se confirme en zone euro
Les indices PMI publiés par Markit sont au plus haut depuis plus de deux ans
Jean-Marc Ayrault exclut une CSG progressive en 2014
La CSG progressive, réclamée par de nombreux députés de la majorité dans un souci de justice fiscale, ne figurera pas dans le budget 2014, déclare Jean-Marc Ayrault dans un entretien accordé au quotidien régional. «Si nous devions suivre cette proposition, elle aurait d’ailleurs des effets compliqués : attention à ne pas trop mettre à contribution les classes moyennes», ajoute le chef du gouvernement.
L'Apec veut créer un passeport pour les fonds asiatiques
Les ministres de Singapour, de Corée du Sud, d’Australie et de Nouvelle-Zélande sont tombés d’accord pour faciliter les ventes transfrontalières de fonds dans la région, rapporte le journal financier. Les ministres de finances de ces quatre pays ont signé à cet effet un accord de principe destiné à mettre en place à l’horizon 2016 un passeport pour les fonds de la région, dénommé Asia Region Funds Passport (ARFP).
Le ministère des Finances, cœur des négociations pour la coalition allemande
Wolfgang Schäuble conserverait le poste si ce dernier restait dans le panier de la CDU, mais il y a de fortes chances qu’il doive être cédé au parti allié
Convictions AM se recentre sur ses fondamentaux pour rebondir
La société va renouer avec la stratégie de gestion qui était la sienne jusqu'en 2011, afin d'endiguer la baisse de ses encours, tombés à 460 millions
La sortie de récession se confirme en zone euro
Les indices PMI publiés par Markit sont au plus haut depuis plus de deux ans
Les investisseurs ont plébiscité les actions avant la dernière réunion de la Fed
Les statistiques montrent des flux entrants records sur la semaine close le 18 septembre, tirés par les fonds indiciels cotés
William Dudley défend l'approche de la Fed
Le maintien d’une politique monétaire ultra-accommodante est justifié aux Etats-Unis compte tenu de diverses menaces pesant sur l'économie, en particulier les incertitudes budgétaires, a déclaré William Dudley, le président de la Fed de New York. Dans un discours, ce proche allié du président Ben Bernanke a estimé qu’il faudrait encore «un moment considérable» avant de revenir à un taux de chômage de 6,5%.
La croissance manufacturière ralentit aux Etats-Unis
Le rythme de croissance de l’activité du secteur manufacturier américain a ralenti de façon inattendue en septembre, en raison d’un affaiblissement conjoint de la demande et des embauches. D’après l’enquête menée par Markit auprès des directeurs d’achats, l’indice PMI «flash» est ressorti en septembre à 52,8, contre 53,1 le mois dernier et 54,0 attendu en moyenne par les économistes.
La Française reprend des actifs immobiliers de Vivarte
Le gérant d’actifs La Française a réalisé l’externalisation de plus de 80 actifs commerciaux du groupe d’habillement et de chaussures en France. Les flux locatifs du portefeuille sont sécurisés par des baux d’une durée de 12 ans consentis à des enseignes nationales telles que André, Caroll, Kookaï, Minelli et San Marina en centre-ville. «Nous avons monté un OPCI RFA EL dédié autour de ce portefeuille, avec une stratégie de conservation à long terme des actifs», indique Antonin Prade, responsable des investissements immobiliers pour comptes de tiers chez La Française REM. Vivarte, qui a déjà externalisé le gros de ses actifs immobiliers d’exploitation, avait fait part de cette cession cet été sans dévoiler l’identité du repreneur. Selon plusieurs sources proches du dossier, la valeur de la transaction approche 200 millions d’euros. Lancé en mars dernier, l’appel d’offres pour la sélection du gérant a été mené par la banque d’affaires Easton Corporate Finance.
Mario Draghi évoque une troisième LTRO
La Banque centrale européenne (BCE) n’exclut pas de lancer une nouvelle opération de refinancement à long terme (LTRO) pour endiguer la remontée des taux du marché monétaire, a répété lundi son président, Mario Draghi. «Nous sommes prêts à utiliser tout instrument, y compris un nouveau LTRO si nécessaire, pour maintenir les taux du marché monétaire à un niveau correspondant à notre évaluation de l’inflation à moyen terme», a-t-il dit devant la commission des Affaires économiques et monétaires du Parlement européen.
Convictions AM se repositionne avec le départ d'Alexandre Hezez
Après avoir privilégié la gestion de titres en direct depuis juin 2011, Convictions AM a décidé de revenir «à une gestion mixte qui permet d’avoir accès aux stratégies les plus efficaces, de se concentrer sur la gestion des risques en utilisant des instruments de couverture tout en s’appuyant sur les talents des meilleurs gérants spécialisés», indique la société dans un communiqué. Son président fondateur, Philippe Delienne, la direction effective de l’équipe de gestion de Convictions AM alors qu’Alexandre Hezez, directeur de la gestion, a décidé de se lancer dans un projet entrepreneurial. Un projet soutenu par Cloran Finance, actionnaire principal de Convictions AM.
23/09/2013
Chelsea Fnancial and Albemarle launch fund ratings service
Chelsea Financial Services and Albemarle Street Partners are planning to launch a fund ratings service in early 2014, aimed at retail investors and investment advisers, Investment Week reports. The joint venture which will be responsible for the activity, FundCalibre, will be based on the fund screening tool from Albemarle, whose results will be crossed with qualitative analysis from Chelsea. The ratings process will create an annual list of fund ratings, which will be reviewed on a monthly basis.
23/09/2013
Major hedge fund managers maintain their status
With wealth estimated at USD20bn in September 2013, George Soros remains at the top of the rankings of the richest US hedge fund managers in the rankings of the 400 wealthiest Americans established by Forbes magazine. Like Soros, all the historic giants of the sector take the top places in the annual rankings.Ray Dalio, who manages the largest hedge fund in the world, Bridgewater (USD120bn in assets) is in second place, with wealth of USD12.9bn, followed by James Simons (USD12bn), John Paulson (USD11.4bn), and Steve Cohen (USD9.4bn).Hedge funds account for 7% of the 400 richest Americans. There are fewer of them than last year, with 28, down from 31, but 24 of them have seen an increase in their wealth year on year. To place in the Forbes rankings, minimal wealth is over USD1.3bn, an increase of USD200m over 2012.
23/09/2013
Strong inflows to Pictet-EUR Short Term High Yield
Roman Gaiser, head of high yield fixed income at Pictet Asset Management and former star manager at Threadneedle and F&C, on Friday in Paris announced that the Pictet-EUR Short Term High Yield fund ( LU0726357444) now has assets of EUR1.785bn, and that it has posted net inflows of EUR649.09 since the beginning of the year.The fund currently includes shares from 98 issuers and a total of 158 positions, with a turnover rate of about 40%. That makes it a “buy and hold” product, meaning that one of its unique characteristics compared with competing funds is that it invests in securities with a firm maturity of 0-4 years, which allows for effective management of duration at about 1.2 years.In general, Gaiser remains confident in the asset class, since carry remains attactive, since the quality of issues has improved, and the market has priced in a default rate of 25% for the next five years, while in reality it is about 2% per year.
23/09/2013
Source and GLG jointly offer two new ETFs
The new Source Man GLG Continental Europe Plus et l’ETF Source Man GLG Asia Plus ETFs, which will be listed on the London Stock Exchange from 23 September 2013, is based on active management whose strategy is supervised by GLG Partners LP.According to Ted Hood, CEO of Source, these Irish-registered, long-only products (see attachment) which are based on beta plus strategies, use the same approach as the Man GLG Europe Plus (EUR700m), and aim to capture outperformance related to the investment recommendations of the best equity brokers, provided especially to GLG.These investment ideas are then used to create liquid and diversified equity portfolios. These strategies aim to improve returns from contributors, using several algorithms which detect trends in widespread ideas.
23/09/2013
Thornburg IM plans additions to UCITS range
The US-based asset management firm Thornburg Investment Management is planning to add a fund to its UCITS product range within the next few months, Citywire Global reports.
23/09/2013
SPDR ETF launches fund of US high yield bonds
SPDR ETF, the tracker platform from State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) on 20 September announced the launch of a new bond ETF on the Xetra segment from Deutsche Börse. The SPDR Barclays 0-5 Year US High Yield Bond UCITS (ticker: SYBK (EUR) offers access, in a single transaction, to US short-term, high yield bonds, on securities with a maturity shorter than five years.“Like businesses which have improved their balance sheets since the global fniancial crisis, the underlying fundamentals of credit markets remain robust, which results in an anticipation of lower default rates than their historic level of 4.9%,” says Olivier Paquet, director of SPDR ETF in France.53 SPDR ETFs are now available to investors in Europe. This launch follows the recent introduction of three new short-term bond ETFs on Deutsche Börse and the London Stock Exchange.
23/09/2013
Julie Rachilne joins Turenne Capital
The private equity fund Trenne Capital Partenaires, whose assets under management total over EUR450m, is continuing to develop its health care unit, with the arival of Julie Rachline as chief investment officer. Julie Rachline has nearly ten years of experience in health care in various and complementary professions. She was most recently at L3S Partnership, an executive search agency dedicated to the recruitment of directors in the area of health care (major groups, SMEs, startups, medications, medical equipment and sevices) or scientific direcftors at instituitons, including ANSM (formerly AFSSAPS).
23/09/2013
Good growth outlooks at Henderson GI
Assets at Henderson Global Investors on the French market continued to increase in 2013. As of the end of June, assets under management totalled about EUR1.6bn, after being solidly beneath EUR1bn in 2012. As of the end of August, inflows were positive to the tune of about EUR200m, and the trend remains positively oriented, Patricia Kaveh, director of development for Henderson GI in France, Monaco and Geneva told Newsmanagers on 20 Spetember at an investors’ conference. Kaveh also states that development in this market, recently cited by the CEO of Henderson GI, Andrew Formica (see Newsmanagers of 09/09/2013), is expected by the end of the year to bring the opening of an office in Geneva. A planned joint venture in real estate with the pension fund TIAA-CREF, announced at the end of June 2013 (see Newsmanagers of 06/25/2013) is expected to be completed in early March 2014.
23/09/2013
US MMFs return to France
US money market funds have returned to France this year, but banks are still seeking to wean themselves off this source of financing after being caught out by its sudden withdrawal during the euro zone crisis, the Financial Times observes. Last year, exposure to French banks has risen 255%, according to Fitch.
23/09/2013
Emannuelle Hsu joins Cedrus AM
The active sustainable management specialist Cedrus AM on 20 September announced the arrival of Emanuelle Hsu on the sales and marketing team as head of sales development. With this recruitment, Cedrus AM hopes to accelerate its presence serving institutional distribution personnel. Hsu previously worked at GFS as head of development for France and internationally serving multi-management and institutional investor clients. Cedrus AM, founded in 2012, has over EUR350m in assets managed and advised, including EUR52m in assets under management and EUR320m in assets advised.
23/09/2013
Interim head of UMR to remain a little longer
Christian Oyarbide, who was appointed as interim CEO of the French pension fund UMR earlier this year, will see his term extended until next year, IPE reports. Oyarbide was appointed in May to replace Charles Vaquier, and had been expected to stay until August 2013. He will now be staying one extra year, IPE reports.
23/09/2013
Consultants discover the wealth management niche
An increasing number of investment consultants that traditionally operated solely in the institutional space are investing resources in retail wealth management, Patrick Newcomb, senior analyst at Cerulli Associates, states. This trend became more prominent over the past decade, as investment consultants began targeting banks, broker/dealers, and large independent registered investment advisors (RIAs).Patrick Newcomb explains that retail wealth management firms have a number of options to choose from for outsourcing the investment piece of their fee-based platform, including selecting a third-party vendor, partnering with a firm for investment research, and choosing an investment consultant to build a product lineup. Investment consultants typically offer investment outsourcing, operational due diligence, and liability-driven investment services, and most of these services can be applied to broker/dealers and their advisors.According to Cerulli, the foray of investment consultants in the managed accounts space creates both an opportunity and a challenge for asset managers. Investment consultants represent an additional avenue for managers to deliver their products to broker/dealers, banks, and RIAs, but also require highly specialized expertise in order to adequately address.
23/09/2013
Advent claims HFs don't know how to sell themselves
A survey of 152 investment advisers, funds of hedge funds, family offices, charities and retirement savings plans carried out by Advent Software has determined a fairly precise cartography of the elements that investors expect from hedge fund managers as part of a “pitch.”It finds largely that two thirds of investors and consultants decide within the first half hour whether they are going to continue to study the case, and one quarter of these decide in the first ten minutes.The consensus finds that presentations should ideally consist of 10 to 20 slides, while fewer than 20 are preferable.More than half of the executives surveyed find that hedge fund managers are not sufficiently transparent about their investment policy. The most widespread error, according to three quarters of respondents, is that hedge funds managers are unable to specify what it is that sets their strategy apart, or to communicate on the real effectiveness of their fund.
23/09/2013
ESMA highlights an improvement in market conditions in second quarter
The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) published before the week-end its Trends, Risks, Vulnerabilities (TRV) Report and a Risk Dashboard for the second quarter of 2013.In collective investments, the report observes that asset managers benefited from improved market conditions, mainly driven by bond, equity or alternative funds whereas money market fund assets decreased. Overall, leverage remained moderate but capital inflows were volatile reflecting a decline in investor sentiment.
23/09/2013
Allfunds opens office in Zurich
A joint venture of Santander and Intesa Sanpaolo, Allfunds Bank, in May received a sales license for Switzerland from the Swiss regulator Finma for Allfunds International Switzerland Ltd, Funds People reports. The affiliate is led by Stig Harby, who joined Allfunds three years ago.The opening of an office in Zurich marks a new step in the expansion of Allfunds in Europe, after Madrid, Milan, London and Luxembourg.The volume of assets intermediated by Allfunds totals EUR100bn. The platform serves 380 institutional clients in 25 countries, and offers 35,000 funds from 450 asset management firms.
23/09/2013
Dynapartners recruits for teams
The Swiss firm Dynapartners has recruited Kaisa Paavilanen as an addition to its Investment Management & Client Advisory team, Finews reports. Paavilainen had previously worked in London at Barclays, and at UBS as a controller.