In an article on the Fund Forum in Monaco and the new questions which asset management firms are said to be facing about their business models, Handelsblatt reports that Benjamin Phillips, a partner at Casey Quirk & Associates, predicts that the winning asset management firms in the future will be those that focus on retirement planning products and products aimed at high net worth clients. Amin Rajan, head of the research agency Create, says institutional investors are now seeking to invest in global equities portfolios, tracker funds and emerging markets products, commodities, and private equity. Retail investors, for their part, are primarily interested in protected-capital products and performance. These requirements overall are very far from what managers are offering.

According to sources familiar with the matter, Christopher Hohn is now in takls with investors in the hedge fund The Children’s Investment Fund Management (TCI, USD8bn in assets), and is reportedly offering them more attractive terms, or to unfreeze some of their assets. He had managed to impose lock-ups of 3 or 5 years. Now, the fund may create a new class of shares with a lack-up of only 6 months and quarterly liquidity. Hohn is also considering charging performance commissions on the basis of performance over a period of several years, instead of on yearly performance. In the first five months of the year, the TCI fund lost 7%.

The asset management industry will be a site of increased polarisation in 2009, as the largest companies will lose weight, and the smaller firms will continue to decline. In its annual study of the British asset management industry, the independent consultant Hymans Robertson predicts that the trend of rising staff numbers observed in the past three years will be reversed, and a wave of layoffs will affect the front office. Hymans Robertson also says it remains bullish on active management, adding that many active managers have earned very good returns compared with last year.

La Tribune reports that as the Saudi conglomerate Saad restructures its debt and the assets of its chairman, the billionaire Maan al-Sanea, have been frozen, a dozen banks which arranged USD6.3bn in syndicated loans to the group are at risk of losing their money. Among the banks are Citigroup, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Standard Chartered and JP Morgan.

After Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and UBS, Citigroup has become the next US bank to compensate for cuts in annual bonuses by increasing fixed salaries, La Tribune reports. According to the New York Times, cited by La Tribune, pay raises are as much as 50% in essential areas such as investment banking and trading. The goal is to prevent talent from leaving the bank. In Europe, moderation prevails in terms of pay scales, and talented personnel leaving their jobs is not a major issue.

On the basis of its degree of capitalisation as measured by Tier 1 owners’ equity ratio, JP Morgan ranks as the most solid bank in the world, as rated by the Banker, and reported in La Tribune. JP Morgan is followed by Bank of America, Citigroup, RBS and HSBC.

According to the first study of German data for the five-year period from May 2003-May 2008, for EUR50m in assets invested in 52 master funds and 430 sub-funds, German institutional investors are paying too much for management of their investments. The management firm Universal Investment and the Otto Beisheim School of Management determined that, although institutional investors prefer active management, managers provided them with portfolios with lower levels of risk, whose evolution was close to that of the Dax, EuroStoxx or Dow Jones indexes. Annual tracking error was 1.31, which is very low in international terms, and the trend has been steadily downward. Meanwhile, master funds in the period under review generated average returns of 6.58% per year, while the market indexes gained 6.87%. The authors of the study estimate that if institutionals had used ETFs or index-based mandates as the core of their portfolios, and genuinely active mandates as satellites, they could have saved as much as 25% of their management fees.

Cheyne Capital Management (UK) LLP has announced the appointment of Jorge Giampaoli as a partner and manager of the new fund Cheyne Equity Macro Fund. Giampaoli joins from Morgan Stanley, where he worked for eight years and served as head of trading as principal for European equities before joining Cheyne Capital.

La Tribune reports that the SEC, the US regulatory authority, is considering toughening the rules for money market funds. The regulator may forbid the purchase of illiquid assets and the imposition of a 5% limit on their exposure to cash and highly liquid assets. The average maturity date for debt in the portfolio may be reduced from 90 to 60 days. In addition, regular stress testing and monthly reporting may be instituted.

At the conclusion of a 60-day comment period, the SEC is planning to require money market funds to maintain higher levels of liquidity and to hold assets which are both highly liquid and of the best possible credit rating in order to ensure that they are able to reimburse investors rapidly, the Wall Street Journal reports. One of the points that worries professionals is a proposed rule that funds which sell shares to institutional investors need to have more available liquidity than those whose subscribers are retail investors: specialists say that it is very difficult to draw a clear distinction between the two classes of subscribers.

«Par le passé, nous utilisions une approche géographique des pays de l’Est, auxquels nous avons adjoint la Turquie. Mais, à présent, nous avons adopté plutôt une analyse en fonction de la situation économique de chaque pays, étant entendu que, d’une manière générale, ces trente pays vont connaître cette année une baisse de PIB de l’ordre de 5 %... sauf peut-être l’Azerbaïdjan, dont la croissance tombera à 10-15 % contre 35 %. Pour 2010, il faut s’attendre globalement à une croissance de 1-2 %. Lorsque la reprise sera effectivement revenue, la région devrait pouvoir afficher des taux de croissance de 4-4,5 %, ce qui est plus sain et soutenable que les plus de 5 % de moyenne constatés pour la période 1999-2008», a déclaré mercredi à Paris Marcus Svedberg, chief economist d’East Capital.La nouvelle classification distingue entre trois catégories de pays, même si, pour l’instant, la différenciation est ténue. Pour Marcus Svedberg, il y a tout d’abord les pays à forts déséquilibres qui ne vont pas profiter d’une croissance des exportations et de la demande intérieure ou qui se débattent avec le FMI, comme les républiques baltes, l’Ukraine, les pays des Balkans occidentaux et d’Asie Centrale. Ils risquent une reprise en «L», donc une profonde et longue récession couplée ou non à des dévaluations.Dans un deuxième groupe, l'économiste en chef d’East Capital place les petits pays affligés d’une forte dépendance vis-à-vis de l'étranger et de la conjoncture mondiale, qui connaîtraient plustôt une reprise en «U». C’est le cas de pays comme la Sloavquie (où Volkswagen pèse 15 % du PIB), la Moldavie, l’Albanie, le Tadjikistan, le Kirgizhstan, voire même la République tchèque. Ces pays sont tributaires de la conjoncture en Europe occidentale et en Allemagne, mais aussi des investissements directs étrangers (IDE) et des transferts de leurs travailleurs immigrés (dont le retour risquerait au surplus de causer des problèmes supplémentaires de chômage).Enfin, Marcus Svedberg place dans la catégorie des pays qui pourraient connaître une croissance relativement rapide les économies les plus importantes de la région qui affichent peu de déséquilibres, voire sont à l'équilibre. C’est en particulier le cas de la Russie, de la Turquie et de la Pologne qui, avec la République tchèque, représentent 65 % du PIB des pays d’Europe orientale. Ces pays ont de marchés du travail très souples, ils ont les moyens de stimuler en interne la croissance, ils sont des banques saines, des déficits budgétaires et des opérations courantes peu importants ainsi que des marchés intérieurs de grande taille qui les rendent moins dépendants de l’exportation.

The Korean management firm Mirae Asset Global Investments, which is beginning to develop activities in France from its London offices, will soon be registering funds in France, in order to make them available to retail investors, Hendrik Cosijn von Ripperda, director of institutional distribution for Europe at Mirae, tells Newsmanagers at the Fund Forum International in Monaco. In the past few months, the Asian management firm has made some efforts in marketing to make itself better known to institutional investors in France. But now, the firm would like to approach the retail market via platforms. Its funds, which are largely focused on emerging markets, are expected to be registered this autumn.

Citigroup has restricted negotiations for a sale of its Japanese asset management affiliate, Nikko Asset Management, to three potential buyers, the Wall Street Journal reports. The firm is the third-largest Japanese asset management firm, and its sale is expected to bring in more than USD1bn for the bank. The contenders still in the running are T&D Holdings, Sumotomo Trust & Banking and Bank of New York Mellon, and sources familiar with the matter say that bids are already higher than the vendor had initially expected.

Le Temps reoprts that the former head of the products division at Julius Baer is founding his own management firm aimed at institutional investors, entitled Dynapartners, to profit from the changes now taking place in asset management. “A consolidation movement will take place in the next few years,” says Ben Wittmann, cited by Le Temps. Switzerland is home to 2,600 small asset management firms, which manage an average of CHF300m with an average of five employees. Dynapartners is planning to grow organically and through acquisitions, and aims to manage CHF5bn to CHF7bn with 25 employees in five years’ time.

On Thursday morning, UBS announced that Chi-Won Yoon will be taking over as Chairman & CEO Asia Pacific and as a member of the board of directors, effective immediately. He replaces Rory Tapner, who is leaving the group after 25 years. Chi-Won Yoon will retain his responsibilities as head of securities for the UBS investment bank in the Asia Pacific region (APAC) and as country head and CEO for the Hong Kong branch. UBS employs 9,500 people in the APAC region, in investment banking, wealth management, and asset management.

Deka Immobilien Investment has spent EUR28.1m of its dedicated fund Deka-S-Property Fund N°1 to acquire a 15,000 square-metre office property on the viale Jenner in Milan. The vendor is the real estate fund management firm BNP Paribas REIM SGR. The property is wholly leased to the mobile telephone operator Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM).

Selon le site internet de L’Echo, JPMorgan trône désormais en tête du palmarès des banques les plus solides du monde. C’est ce qui ressort du nouveau classement du Top 1 000 World Banks établi par le magazine «The Banker». Pourtant, ce classement ne fait pas oublier que les profits des banques ont chuté de 85 % l’an dernier. Le secteur a engrangé 115 milliards de dollars contre 781 milliards en 2007. Le rendement de leurs fonds propres a plongé, tombant à 2,69 % en 2008 contre 20 % en 2007, selon l’estimation réalisée par le magazine. Royal Bank of Scotland prend la «pole position» d’un autre classement: celui des établissements ayant subi les plus lourdes pertes. Avec 59,3 milliards de dollars de pertes en 2008, RBS éclipse Citigroup, qui en a enregistré pour 53 milliards de dollars, et Wells Fargo, troisième avec 47,8 milliards.

According to the website of the newspaper L’Echo, JPMorgan is now the most solid bank in the world, according to the new Top 1,000 World Banks rankings by the magazine “The Banker.” The rankings do not fail to take into account that banking profits fell by 85% last year. The sector earned USD115bn, compared with USD781bn in 2007. Returns on owners’ equity fell to 2.69% in 2008, from 20%, in 2007, according to estimates by the magazine. Royal Bank of Scotland takes pole position in another ranking: banks which have sustained the heaviest losses. With USD59.3bn lost in 2008, RBS eclipses Citigroup, which lost USD53bn, and Wells Fargo, in third place, with losses of USD47.8bn.

Les grandes fortunes privilégient les actifs moins risqués, et les trois quarts d'entre elles ont perdu confiance dans leur gestionnaire

Les taux seront maintenus à un niveau plancher pendant « une période prolongée »

Le « smile » des options sur le Bund s'est inversé, accompagné d'une baisse générale des volatilités

La population des millionnaires a chuté de 14,9 % en 2008 à 8,6 millions, leur patrimoine ayant décru de 19,5 % à 32.800 milliards de dollars

Les marchés anticipent que la Banque centrale européenne augmentera les taux dès l’année prochaine ; de 100 pb d’ici à juin 2010 à en croire la courbe des Eonia (si sa lecture conserve du sens tant que la crise perturbe les fixations de prix). De telles anticipations sont beaucoup trop hâtives et l’analyse ne laisse guère envisager les premiers resserrements monétaires avant le second semestre 2011, pour deux raisons.

Foer the first time, the European Commission has published estimates on the net cost of the bailout of banks for public debt in the Union since the start of the crisis, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Il could cost 1,8 trillion euros, 14 PIB points, if all rescue programs are used in all and if a large part of the loans are not paid back. Yhe estimate is 810 billion euros.

The SRI management firm Ökoworld (EUR500m) has announced the appointment of Ralph Prudent as a member of its board and head of fund distribution. He was previosuly a member of the board of directors at the management firm Maintrust (Nomura group) for ten years.

The government of Antigua and Barbuda has removed Larry King, accused of complicity in a USD7bn fraud perpetrated by the Texan financier R. Allen Stanford, from his position as the nation’s regulator, the Financial Services Regulatory Commission, the wall Street Journal reports. King’s name has also been stricken from documents at the local market surveillance authority. Antigua and Barbuda expect the United States to demand the extradition of King, who is accused of receiving USD100,000 in bribes for giving the SEC official statements about Stanford’s activities.

Deutsche Börse announced on Tuesday that the British firm Capita Financial Group has signed up to the Central Facility for Funds (CFF), a post-market solution offered by Clearstream for investment funds. The CFF now has 44 participations and offers access to more than 35,000 fund shares and share classes.

L’Agefi Suisse reports that the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) has claimed that the arrival of Patrick Odier as its head does not alter Switzerland’s ambition to reconquer third place as a banking centre worldwide, after New York and London.

L’Agefi Suisse reports that the manager of the Fidelity Global Financial Services fund, Tal Eloya, estimates that financial services providers in developing regions have more potential than assets in this sector in developed markets.

Le gestionnaire ISR Ökoworld (500 millions d’euros d’encours), filiale de l’allemand versiko, a annoncé la nomination de Ralph Prudent comme membre de sa direction générale et responsable de la distribution de fonds. Il a été pendant dix ans membre du comité du direction de la société de gestion Maintrust (groupe Nomura).