Jon Horvath, a former analyst at Sigma Capital Management, an affiliate of the hedge fund management firm SAC Capital Advisors, on Friday became the 69th person to plead guilty in an insider trading scandal. He admitted before a Manhattan Federal court that he received insider information on the subject of Dell and Nvidia, and then passed the information on to his boss, the portfolio manager Michael Steinberg, a close ally of the founder of SAC, Steven A. Cohen. Steinberg was not mentioned by name by Horvath, and was not publicly accused, but he is on the list of accomplices not facing charges.

David Morant, a former manager at the US hedge fund firm SAC Capital, has reappeared at the London-based CWS, Financial News reports.

Compared with the past 14 annual events, the 2013 Fonds'13 investment fund convention in Zurich will be one day shorter: the day on Tuesday, 6 February will be a professional investors day, and on Wednesday, 7 February, the roughtly 100 exhibitors will be available to retail investors, finews.ch reports. According to the organiser, 80% of exhibitors feel that they can handle two days’ worth of the general public in one day, which will also result in savings. In addition, the exhibitors are primarily interested in the institutional visitors.

The Wall Street Journal observes that the price war in ETFs has kicked off again. On 21 September, Charles Schwab announced that it was cutting commissions by an average of 50% on 15 of its ETFs, with the lowest falling to 0.04%. According to XTF.com, Schwab is not alone, as there are 16 ETFs whose annual commissions are under 0.1%.However, investors should not forget that annual management commissions are the most visible, but not the only source of costs: tracking error and spreads are also factors to take into consideration.

Russell Investments has announced that 39 companies recently launched on the stock exchange will be added to the Russell Global index. 19 of these firms are also joining the Russell 3000 US index, a statement says. Two companies will be added to the Russell 1000 large caps index.

The environmental and accounting/governance ratings agency GMI Ratings has announced that it has signed a license agreement with Global Index Group to develop corporate governance indices using non-traditional risk measures developed by GMI ratings, known as Accounting & Governance Risk (AGR) and Key Metrics, an environmental, social and governance (ESG) list. AGR ratings reflect the accounting and governance practices statistically associated with disciplinary enforcement by the SEC, lawsuits and other events which may provoke rapid falls in the value of shares. Concretely, the cooperation between GMI Ratings and Global Invest Group will result in the creation of the GIG/GMI High Governance Index (GIGHGI), which will be available to clients who subscribe for a license of over 60 days. The agency also states that it is already in talks with an asset management firm which is planning to license the GIGHGI index for use as the underlying for a tracker product. The development of the index is led by Kelly Laughton, CEO of Glboal Index Group, who was the founder of the range of Russell indices. GMI Ratings was created in 2010 by a merger of GovernanceMetrics International, The Corporate Library and Audit Integrity.

US money market fund managers are expecting significant inflows of money in the rest of this year, as a rule established in 2008 by the government to guarantee an unlimited amount of non-interest-bearing accounts at banks. The Dodd-Frank Deposit Insurance Provision expires at the end of 2012. A limit is expected to be introduced, which is expected to be USD250,000 per account. The deposits concerned represent a total of about USD1.6trn, the Wall Street Journal reports.According to EPFR Global, money market funds have already attracted USD50bn in net subscriptions since the beginning of second half, following outflows of USD134bn in January-June.

At a presentation in Paris, Patrick Moonen, senior equity strategist at ING Investment Management (ING IM), has emphasized that for asset allocation and absolute return portfolios (EUR30bn in assets), tactical asset allocation has been upated in the direction of higher risk.In other words, the Netherlands-based asset manager is currently preferring equities and real estate, whose valuations are attractive. In equities, Moonen prefers Europe to the United States, and has a neutral position on Japan. In the sectoral area, he is overweight in base materials, durable consumer products and financials, as well as value equities in general, which perform well at the beginning of economic recovery. In addition, ING IM is betting on “high dividend” strategies. However, telecommunications are on the list to underweight.Meanwhile, portfolios are underweight in commodities, since energies and agriculture represent 60% of indices, segments that are not popular with ING IM. Moonen says that although he is overweight in spread products, he is underexposed to government bonds.

The Luxembourg-based LRI Invest SA (EUR8bn in assets) on 1 October announced the recruitment of Angelina Andonova as director international business development. She will be responsible for the recruitment of and relationship management for institutional clients outside Germany, Austria and Switzerland. She had previously been senior investment strategist at Tungsten Capital Management in Frankfurt. The Frankfurt-based team at LRI Invest on 1 October also welcomed Juan Pablo Torres, who will be responsible for the recruitment of and relationship management for institutional clients in Germany. He will be based in Frankfurt, and joins from Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW).

Iván Martín Aranguez, the second-highest paid manager in Spain, after the Bestinver star manager Francisco García Paramés, is leaving his position as CIO for equities at Aviva Gestión, to become head of the Iberian equities team at Santander Asset Management, Citywire reports. Funds People reports that Aranguez will be replaced at Aviva by Pablo Cano, who has worked under him for the past six years.

Colin Ng, the head of Asian equities at Barings, has left the firm to pursue other opportunities, according to Investment Week. He has been replaced by Hyung Jin Lee. Ng joined Barings in January 2010 from MFC Global Investment Management.

So far, the year 2012 has been good for institutional business at Fidelity Worldwide Investment, the Fidelity arm outside the United States, Chris McNickle, global head of institutional business at Fidelity Worldwide Investment, tells Newsmanagers. But this has largely been thanks to the Middle East, Asia and Australia. These regions will gradually overtake the other regions covered by the firm. In Europe, business is more muted, with pockets of growth, however, in Italy and Germany.

Ablemarle Street Partners (ASP) is the name of a new investment consultancy launched by senior investment trio Dan Kemp (former partner at Saltus), Clive Hale (former CIO at Skandia) and Sam Liddle (fund manager at MAM Funds), Fundweb reports.The new company is designed to team with advisers to create an investment process and construct investment portfolios. The firm will help advisers in areas such as client risk-profiling, whole-of-market fund research, portfolio construction, asset allocation and client communication. ASP is also offering advice fund management companies on construction and presentation of investment process, product development and the relevance of their fund ranges in the post-RDR world.

The Upper Tribunal in the United Kingdom has directed the Financial Services Authority (FSA) to fine Stefan Chaligné, a Swiss-based hedge fund manager GBP900,000, (plus disgorgement of the financial benefit he obtained of EUR362,950) and Patrick Sejean, a former senior salesman on Cantor Fitzgerald Europe’s (CFE) London-based French desk GBP650,000. The FSA did not seek to fine Tidiane Diallo, a former junior trader on the same desk, as it accepted that he was in a position of serious financial hardship. Had this not been the case, it would have sought to fine him GBP100,000. The Tribunal also directed the FSA to ban all three individuals from performing any role in regulated financial services.Chaligné, a French National who was both the fund manager of, and a shareholder in, the Cayman Islands based “Iviron” hedge fund deliberately manipulated the market in a total of nine securities traded on a number of different European and North American exchanges, according to the FSA website. He did so by placing orders, through CFE, which were designed to increase the closing price of the securities, and thereby increase the value of the hedge fund, on two key portfolio valuation dates for the fund.The practice of manipulating share prices on portfolio valuation dates (month and year ends) is known colloquially as “window-dressing the close”. Having manipulated the price of eight securities on 31 December 2007, Chaligné then also manipulated the price of two securities on 31 January 2008.The increases in the valuation of the fund enabled Chaligné to present a positive view of the performance of the fund, at a time of difficult market conditions, to current and prospective investors, and thereby present himself as a competent fund manager. The practical effect of his market abuse was to increase the performance and management fees paid to him by the beneficiaries of the hedge fund.Sejean and Diallo effected and executed Chaligné's orders for the purpose of achieving Chaligné's objective. Diallo was involved on one of the dates. Sejean was involved on both dates and deliberately influenced and involved more junior members of staff, including Diallo, in the misconduct. They both understood the manipulative nature of the orders.

Martin Wheatley, one of the directors of the British Financial Services Authority (FSA), presented its recommendations for reform of Libor, Agefi reports. The ten-point plan was nearly unanimously favourably received. Nicholas Motson, professor of finance at the Cass school of business in London, says that the reforms both solve the problem of manipulation of the rage by unscrupulous bankers, who will now be facing added regulation and penal sanctions, and requires the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) to publish the individual rates for banks after three months, which limits their ability to set low rates. Andrew Tyrie, a British MP responsible for overseeing an enquiry into banking standards, applauded the recommendations to withdraw oversight of the rate from the BBA, as its “management has proven disastrous,” he says.

Protests in Spain and Greece and trouble finding an acceptable compromise in the euro zone have slowed investors’ appetite for risk as September draws to a close.In the week to 26 September, equity funds saw net inflows of only USD1.8bn, following a record total of over USD10bn the previous week, according to statistics from EPFR Global. Since the beginning of the year, European equity funds have seen net outflows of USD23.1bn, compared with redemptions of only USD5.1bn in the corresponding period of 2011.Bond funds, for their part, finished the week under review with net inflows of USD7.6bn. High yield debt funds and emerging market bond funds each attracted over USD1bn.Money market funds underwent redemptions totalling USD2.8bn, due to outflows of over USD12bn from European money market funds.

Financière de l’Echiquier will be launching a high yield fund, Echiquier High Yield, Citywire Global reports. The manager will be Olivier de Berranger, who is already manager of the Echiquier Oblig fund.The French asset management boutique has also recently recruited a new value manager, who will be joining the team in mid-October, the firm’s website reports. Damien Mariette was previously at the Fonds de Garantie.

On Friday, Bank of America agreed to pay USD2.43bn to five plaintiffs, including the public pension funds State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio and Teacher Retirement System of Texas, who had accused the bank of concealing the real situation at Merrill Lynch at its acquisition of the brokerage firm in a single weekend in September 2008, the Wall Street Journal reports.The plaintiffs are said to have been seeking USD22bn, had the case gone to court as scheduled on 22 October. Due to the large number of shares they held, each of the two pension funds is expected to receive USD20m.

BNP Paribas Investment Partners (BNPP IP) this Monday is slated to announce it has hired four emerging markets fixed income professionals from State Street Global Advisors’ subsidiary Rexiter Capital Management. These individuals join BNPP IP’s existing emerging markets fixed income team, which consists of an Asian Fixed Income team, emerging markets fixed income portfolio managers based in London and dedicated emerging markets fixed income traders, bringing the total team to 10 portfolio managers.The global emerging markets fixed income team is led by John Morton and is a part of BNPP IP’s global fixed income partner, Fischer Francis Trees & Watts (FFTW). The team is based in Boston, London and Singapore and reports to Guy Williams, CIO of FFTW. Before joining FFTW in July 2012, he was the CIO for Fixed Income and a MD of Rexiter CM.The individuals hired in addition to Morton comprise Mark Capstick, Lewis Jones and Daniel Wood who have been working together at Rexiter CM since end-2007.

It has not only been malicious observers who have been saying for a long time that Allianz Global Investors (AGI) is merely a brand name label for RCM in equity management and Pimco in fixed income. The German/American James D. Dilworth, CEO of AGI Europe, has shown at a conference in Munich that the lines have moved, and that the “surgical removal” of the US firm Pimco, formerly an affiliate of AGI, which on 1 January became a direct affiliate of Allianz, has not set back the ambitions of the German asset management firm.Of EUR300bn in assets, in fact, fixed income represents slightly over 40% of the total, as do equities, while 20% are in multi-asset classes and alternative assets. “In other words,” Dilworth tells Newsmanagers, “we have a very solid fixed income unit. And we are particularly well-positioned in niches such as credit in Europe, high yield in Europe and in the United States, and Asian bonds.”When asked about the consequences of the reorganization, which will involve the disappearance of the names of all affiliates acquired over the years by AGI worldwide, the CEO says that the elimintation of redundancies in the fund range is currently under study. But he declined to comment on whether the phenomenon would be of a size similar to the one in Germany, where one fund out of every two disappeared from the range inherited from Allianz, Dresdner Bank (DIT, etc.) and Commerzbank (Cominvest, formerly ADIG). “At any rate,” he says, “it will not have noticeable repercussions on personnel, since, though we can easily slough off a product range, it would be difficult to resize our teams, which are well-honed.”The asset allocation currently recommended by Dilworth privileges high yield bonds, Asian bonds, products with return, risk and maturity objectives (custom solutions, “since the real problem is uncertainty, not volatility,”) and equities from companies that pay high dividends.

The UK financial services sector has shed 9,000 jobs in the past three months, according to statistics from CBI and PwC cied by the Financial Times. Job cuts were mostly at banks. The Centre for Economics and Business Ressearch expects more than 30,000 jobs to be cut this year, which will bring total employment in the sector below 255,000, the lowest level since 1996.

The haemorrhaging continues: according to VDOS, cited by Funds People, Spanish securities funds have continued to see net outflows from 1 to 21 September of EUR779m. However, their assets as of 21 September were up by EUR989m, due to market effects, at EUR128.914bn.

EDHEC-Risk Institute and CFA Institute on Friday announced the reinforcement of their executive education partnership (initiated in 2008 with the Advances in Asset Allocation Seminar) by offering the Advances in Equity Portfolio Construction Seminar. The course aims to provide investment practitioners with the tools to better understand the limits and benefits of different portfolio construction approaches, and to discuss alternative equity index strategies.The two-day programme is intended for finance practitioners who contribute to the design and implementation of portfolio construction models and is also insightful for investment professionals who analyse or decide on the adoption of appropriate model portfolios or benchmarks for equity investments, or who are interested in customising their strategic equity benchmark.The event will take place on 20-21 November, 2012 in Singapore and on 12-13 February, 2013 in London.

A survey of 310 institutional investors in Western Europe and the US commissioned to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) by State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) reveals that 71 percent of institutional investors believe it is “highly likely” or “likely” that significant tail risk event will occur in the next 12 months. The research shows that the crisis in the Eurozone, the prospect of global or European recession and the slow-down in China among the concerns. Only 20 percent of respondents are “very confident” that they have some form of downside protection in place for the next significant event, with a further 61 percent “somewhat confident” of this. However, 73 percent of institutional investors believe that due to changes in their strategic asset allocation, they are better prepared for the next major tail risk event than they were before the start of the financial crisis, a press release explains. The data showed shifts in allocation – although interestingly, despite elevated concerns, the pace of change has been slower than expected. The widespread impact of tail risk events has resulted in a large proportion of investors reconsidering the products available to mitigate the impact of these events, beyond traditional diversification techniques. The survey showed gains in allocation to other alternatives, such as commodities and infrastructure, and managed futures/commodity trading advisor (CTA) strategies. The allocation to fund-of-hedge-funds declined significantly, with a 9 percentage point drop from pre-2008 figures.

As of the end of December last year, total “sustainable development” investments in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in the form of shares in open-ended funds, mandates, deposits with specialist banks and certificates came to EUR103.5bn, virtually 10% more than at the end of 2010.According to the sixth annual report from Forum Nachhaltige Geldanlagen, investments in sustainable funds had total assets of EUR30.5bn, compared with EUR26.3bn in December of the previous year, and EUR20.2bn as of the end of 2009, following a contraction to EUR11.7bn in 2008, compared with EUR17.1bn at the end of 2007.In Germany, volumes in open-ended funds as of 31 December totalled EUR9.9bn, compared with EUR5.8bn as of the end of 2010, and EUR5.9bn as of the end of 2009. In Austria, assets totalled EUR2.11bn, compared with EUR1.88bn as of the end of 2010, and EUR1.63bn one year earlier. In Switzerland, assets under management fell to EUR18.5bn, from EUR19.6bn one year previously, following a strong expansion compared with EUR12.7bn at the end of 2009.

Lazard Asset Management will be opening an office in Zurich this week. Finews reports that the asset management firm, which has USD134.8bn in assets under management, is planning to take advantage of the development of open architecture in the Swiss market.

The Dynamic Manager Alpha fund, managed by the Swedish bank SEB, has been opened to retail investors, Citywire reports. The Luxembourg-registered fund of funds, managed by Andreas Johansson and Otto Francke, was launched in 2008.

La Caisse Nationale des barreaux français (CNBF), qui recherche huit prestataires pour la gestion de ses encours, déterminera à la mi-octobre la sélection de ces futurs partenaires financiers . William Seyrig, son agent comptable, s’estime satisfait de la qualité des dossiers reçus et explique que « l’accent sera mis sur la fiabilité, la récurrence des performances et le contrôle des risques » dans le choix des lauréats de l’appel d’offres, qui compte quatre lots, allant de 50 à 400 millions d’euros.

Le secrétaire d’Etat au Trésor américain a demandé au Financial Stability Oversight Council, le conseil de stabilité financière, d’examiner une réforme des fonds monétaires. Tim Geithner suggère plusieurs pistes, telles qu’un renforcement des contraintes de liquidité et de capital ou l’abandon de la valeur liquidative constante. Il veut ainsi relancer le projet alors que la SEC avait renoncé fin août à se saisir de la question devant les réticences de l’industrie des fonds monétaires.

Dexia a annoncé vendredi la suppression de 300 postes sur les 1.300 que compte sa filiale française Dexia Crédit Local de France mais prévoit de reclasser 235 salariés dans différentes entités. «Parallèlement, 235 postes seraient disponibles afin de favoriser le reclassement des salariés dont le poste serait supprimé. Dexia prévoit que ces reclassements s’effectuent notamment au sein du «Nouvel Etablissement de Crédit» (NEC), société de moyens appelée à devenir un nouvel acteur du financement du secteur public local français.