Le 22 avril 2011, la banque italienne UniCredit annonçait qu’elle ne vendrait pas sa filiale de gestion d’actifs Pioneer Investments, privilégiant la croissance interne. Cela a mis fin à une longue période d’incertitudes et de spéculations autour de la société, laquelle était notamment convoitée par les français Amundi et Natixis. Malgré ces temps difficiles, en 2010, le bureau parisien de Pioneer a connu «sa plus belle année» en termes de collecte, selon son directeur, Fabien Madar. La société a en effet enregistré des souscriptions nettes de 300 millions d’euros, et terminé l’année à 1,5 milliard. « 2010 a été une année de vérité pour nos commerciaux. Il fallait démontrer que malgré la ‘strategic review’ dont notre société faisait l’objet, notre devenir n’était pas remis en cause. Nous devions donc être proches des clients, ce que nous avons fait et ce qu’ils ont apprécié».Et depuis le début de l’année, le bureau de Paris a collecté 100 millions d’euros supplémentaires, si bien que les encours ressortent à 1,6 milliard d’euros, dont 60 % pour une clientèle «wholesale» et 40 % pour des institutionnels. L’objectif est d’atteindre les 250 millions de souscriptions nettes d’ici à la fin de l’année. Les ambitions de Fabien Madar ne s’arrêtent pas aux frontières françaises puisqu’il couvre également Monaco, le Luxembourg, la Suisse, et, depuis mai, les Pays-Bas et les pays nordiques, une zone géographique qui représente un peu plus d’un milliard d’euros d’encours. Ces nouvelles fonctions lui ont été attribuées à la faveur du départ de Jilert Blom, qui était à la tête des Pays-Bas et des pays nordiques. Et le rattachement à la France s’explique par le fait que ces marchés, à la fois institutionnels et «wholesale», comme dans l’Hexagone, ont le même niveau de technicité que le français, explique Fabien Madar. Aujourd’hui, Pioneer est en fait surtout présent auprès des clients néerlandais et un peu en Suède. Mais la société, sous la houlette de Fabien Madar, compte aussi se développer au Danemark, en Finlande et en Norvège. Concrètement, un commercial, basé à Amsterdam, couvre tous ces marchés, tandis qu’un «country manager» pour l’ensemble de la région est en phase de recrutement. Pour ces pays, «nous n’avons pas d’objectifs quantitatifs pour l’instant, mais qualitatifs : rencontrer le plus de clients possible», indique Fabien Madar. Quant à une éventuelle implantation physique en Scandinavie, elle viendra en temps voulu, en fonction des résultats du développement…

Au 31 mai, l’encours total d’Invesco est ressorti à 661,4 milliards de dollars contre 668 milliards un mois plus tôt, diminution qui a touché aussi bien les ETF, Unit Investment Truts (UIT) et fonds passifs (93,4 milliards contre 97,2 milliards) que les autres fonds (568 milliards contre 571,4 milliards). Ces baisses s’expliquent par des sorties nettes pour les ETF PowerShares QQQ, par une baisse des marchés et par un effet de change négatif de 2,5 milliards de dollars. Cela posé, Invesco précise que les UIT et les fonds passifs ont enregistré des souscriptions nettes.De son côté, Franklin Templeton Investments affiche au 31 mai des actifs sous gestion de 735,8 milliards de dollars contre 733,1 milliards un mois auparavant, malgré un recul à 316,4 milliards contre 321,3 milliards un mois plus tôt pour les fonds d’actions. Les fonds obligataires ont en revanche enregistré une hausse de leurs encours à 296,4 milliards de dollars contre 288,5 milliards.

Ainsi que l’annonçait Newsmanagers le 25 mai, Pictet Asset Management met la dernière main à un fonds crédit susceptible de capturer une bonne partie des hausses et de protéger le portefeuille, voire d'être gagnant en cas de baisse.Il s’agit d’un long/short coordonné, qui n’a pas encore obtenu son agrément de commercialisation de la CSSF luxembourgeoise mais qui a été testé en réel dans l’incubateur-maison. Il utilisera une approche valeur relative sur le crédit, sera un produit multistratégies avec des paris directionnels et non directionnels, et présentera un positionnement actif en matière de négoce et un aspect événementiel. Il investira principalement dans des titres de catégorie investissement, sans contrainte géographique, mais avec une couverture des risques de change et de duration.Le gestionnaire helvétique prépare également une version asiatique de ce fonds, qui pourrait être lancée au quatrième trimestre, ainsi que des OPCVM long/short actions qui, si tout va bien, seront mis sur le marché au début de l’an prochain.

Selon The Hedge Fund Journal, les actifs sous gestion de la plate-forme alternative de Schroders au format Ucits, Schroder GAIA, viennent d’atteindre 1,03 milliard de dollars, dix-huit mois seulement après le lancement de la plate-forme.La plate-forme compte désormais cinq fonds, dont trois gérés par des gérants de hedge funds externes, et deux pilotés en interne. Le dernier fonds proposé aux investisseurs est le Schroder GAIA CQS, un fonds crédit long/short.

Maple Group Acquisition Corp., the vehicle which has been launched for a counter-bid to acquire the Toronto stock exchange (TMX, which is being wooed by the London Stock Exchange), bringing together Canadian banks and pension funds, on Sunday announced that it has signed up four new members: The Quebec financial group Desjardins, GMP Capital, Dundee Capital Markets, and Manulife Financial.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch and the World Bank have announced plans to offer a periodical range of green bonds from the World Bank, aimed at investors at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management. The first World Bank green bonds, which offer environmentally-friendly solutions via an investment grade bond investment, were launched in second quarter 2011.

The US Federal Reserve does not appear to be in a hurry to enter a new phase of quantitative easing, at a time when the European Central Bank has implied that it may raise its rates in July, so that investors rolled their portfolios over into bonds in the first days of June. According to the most recent estimates by EPFR Grlobal, bond funds attracted a net total of USD5.98bn in the week to 8 June. Money market funds, for their part, have posted net inflows of over USD26bn, while equity funds saw outfllows of USD7.74bn. Funds dedicated to US equities, in particular, have posted their heaviest outflows since mid-August 2010. Inflows to European equities remained positive, with inflows of USD236m in the week to 8 June. However, institutional engagements have gone mostly to German equities in 2011. Now counting flows which have totalled over USD6bn since the beginning of the year, European equity funds have seen outflows of over USD1.5bn. Diversified funds posted net inflows of USD219m, which brings inflows since the beginning of the year to over USD15.3bn.

The former Gartmore multi-managers Ari Towli and Nick Roberts have joined the multi-management boutique North Investments Partners, Investment Week reports. The two will work with Nick Stanhope on the range of multi-management products, whose assets under management as of 31 May totalled GBP450m. Both of them will report to the chief executive of North IP, John Husselbee.

Anthony Cheung, a fund manager specialised in China in the global emerging markets team at Gartmore Investment Management, has been recruited by Pictet Asset Management, and has joined the Asian total return team, in which he will be co-manager of long/short funds, under Nidhi Mahhurkar, CityWire reports.

State Street Global Advisors will be launching its first range of ETFs in the United Kingdom next quarter, Investment Week reports. In total, the US management firm, which is one of the largest ETF suppliers in the United States, is planning to launch 50 products in the UK in the next two years.

By the end of the year, Vanguard Investments UK (GBP1.9bn in assets) is planning to increase the number of its funds on sale in the UK from 14 currently to 25, Fundweb reports. Among the products for which a sales license has been applied for from the FSA are some ETFs, risk objective funds, horizon funds, and a strategic allocation fund. Tom Rampulla, CEO, also says that personnel will be increased by the end of the year to 105, from 68 currently.

After eleven years at Gartmore, where he was most recently head of intermediary sales, Warren Shiels was recruited by Man Group on 6 June as director, UK retail. He will be in charge of overseeing sales of long-only and absolute return funds from Man as well as GLG to third parties such as life offices, platforms, and IFAs.

According to an annual survey by the French financial management association (AFG) of employee savings levels, assets under management in this area as of the end of December totalled a record EUR88.6bn, which represents a 4.5% increase over a total fo USD84.8bn as of the end of 2009 (as of the end of 2008, they were down to EUR71.42bn, comapred with EUR87.6bn twelve months earlier).The AFG states that contributions to employee savings plans totalled EUR13.3bn in 2010, compared with EUR11.8bn in 2009, an increase of 12.7%, “largely due to an increase in employees’ voluntary contributions,” which themselves represented EUR4.2bn. Meanwhile, redemptions totalled EUR10.6bn, so that net subscriptions totalled EUR2.7bn, of which over EUR880m (about one third of net inflows) were for PERCO plans.

Barclays Capital Fund Solutions, the asset management unit of Barclays Capital, late last week announced the launch of a UCITS format return fund in Singapore, entitled Barclays Real Return USD Fund, Asian Investor reports. The fund will invest up to 70% of its assets in bonds, including inflation-linked bonds. The remaining 30% will be invested in commodities and money markets, depending on market conditions.

As Newsmanagers announced on 25 May, Pictet Asset Management is putting the finishing touches on a credit fund which will aim to capture as much as possible of gains and to protect the portfolio, or to come out a winner in falling markets.The fund is a UCITS long/short fund, which has not yet received a sales license from Luxembourg’s CSSF, but which has been fully tested in the asset management firm’s incubator. It will use a relative value approach to credit, and will be a multi-strategy product, with directional and non-directional bets, active positioning in trading, and an event-driven aspect. It will invest primarily in investment-grade securities, without a regional constraint, but with hedging for currency and duration risks.The Swiss asset manager is also preparing an Asian version of the fund, which may be launched in fourth quarter, and a long/short equities products, which, if all goes well, will be released on the market early next year.

In April, net inflows to funds in Europe were at their highest levels for 6 months, at EUR24.8bn, excluding money market activity, and EUR28.6bn including money market funds (of which EUR2.4bn were for French products), according to statistics from Lipper. The top three asset management firms in terms of subscriptions were Franklin Templeton, which holds onto the top spot with EUR3.3bn, followed by Allianz Global Investors/Pimco with EUR2bn, and GAM Holding with EUR1.3bn. Although net sales of bonds funds have increased for the fourth month in a row, to EUR7bn (compared with EUR4.7bn in March; see Newsmanagers of 13 May), equity funds have seen a spectacular recovery, with EUR12.9bn in net inflows, compared with EUR8.5bn in net outflows the previous month. Funds on sale across borders have seen net subscriptions of EUR10.6bn for bonds, and EUR7.8bn for equities, while Italian, Dutch and Spanish investors have made net redemptions. Lipper also points to good results for commodities and raw materials funds, which have attracted EUR960m and EUR860m in subscriptions, respectively, bringing the total for the first four months of the year to EUR3.7bn and EUR4.4bn.

The Hedge Fund Journal reports that assets under management by the Schroders UCITS-compliant hedge fund platform Schroder GAIA have topped USD1.03bn, only 18 months after the launch of the platform. The platform now includes five funds of which three are managed by external hedge fund managers, and two are internally managed. The most recent fund offered to investors is the Schroder GAIA CQS, a long/short credit strategy.

The official appointment of Xavier Guillon as head of Oyster Funds, the investment fund division of Banque Syz & Co, was announced on12 October. The manager has now passed the starting line, and is into the course, and so can now talk to Newsmanagers about the major outlines of his development strategy.

Since the launch of the first physical gold ETF fund in 2003, funds of this type have attracted a total of USD70bn in assets which would otherwise have been invested in gold mines equity, the Wall Street Journal claims.According to the independent research institute MineFund, thirteen of the largest gold producers will distribute a total of USD2bn in dividends, in a bid to win back the interest of investors. Among the firms are Barrick Gold, Newmount Mining and Goldcorp. Newmont has even defined a dividend indexed to the price of gold, which would increase its dividend by USD0.20 for every USD100 rise in the price of the precious metal.

On 10 June, the CNMV announced that it has granted permission, at the request of the asset management firm BBVA Asset Management and of BBVA as the depository, to convert the real estate fund BBVA Propriedad into a REIT format real estate investment firm. Assets in the fund as of the end of April, according to statistics from the Spanish Inverco association of management firms, totalled EUR1.3bn.

Julio Segura, president of the Spanish securities commission (CNMV), says that rating agencies continue to be subject to conflicts of interest, so long as they are paid by issuers that they rate, Cinco Días reports. At an unveiling of a book entitled “A century of Spanish financial history,” at the Bank of Spain, Segura stated that the solution would be to make ratings be paid for by those who use them, since the creation of an official agency would run the risk of creatind problems when it came to ratings of government bonds.

The Spanish arm of Société Générale was issued a license by the CNMV on 10 June to release the Lyxor Active Commodities Fund and Lyxor Epsilon Global Trend Fund sub-funds of its Irish Sicav Investments Strategies Plc.The regulator has also issued sales licenses to Allfunds Bank for the C, I and S share classes in the French-registered fund Saint-Honoré Signatures Financières (see Newsmanagers of 20 April), from Edmond de Rothschild Investment Managers (EdRIM).

On 22 April 2011, the Italian UniCredit bank announced that it will not be selling its asset management unit Pioneer Investments, and will be preferring internal growth. The announcement marked the end of a long period of uncertainty and speculation about the future of the firm, which was being wooed by the French firms Amundi and Natixis. Despite these difficult times, in 2010, the Paris office of Pioneer had “its best year ever” in terms of inflows, according to the director, Fabien Madar. The firm has posted net inflows of EUR300m, and finished the year with EUR1.5bn of assets under management. “2010 was a year of great success for our sales team. We needed to show that despite the strategic review our company was subject to, our future was not up in the air. We therefore needed to stay close to clients, which we did, and which they appreciated.” And since the beginning of the year, the Paris office has taken on a further EUR100m, putting assets at EUR1.6bn, of which 60% are for wholesale clients, and 40% for institutionals. The objective is to achieve net subscriptions of EUR250m by the end of the year. Madar’s ambitions don’t stop at the borders of France, and also extend to Monaco, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and since May, the Netherlands and Nordic countries, an area which represents slightly over EUR1bn in assets. The new position was handed to Madar following the departure of Jilert Blom, who had been head of the Netherlands and the Nordic countries. Combining these countries with the French-speaking ones can be explained as due to the fact that these markets are both institutional and wholesale, and they are at the same level of technicity as France, Madar says. Pioneer has now built itself a presence serving Dutch clients and a few in Sweden. But the firm, led by Madar, is also planning to develop in Denmark, Finland, and Norway. One sales person based in Amsterdam will be serving all these markets, while a country manager for the entire region is in a recruitment phase. For these countries, “we have no quantitative objectives for the moment, but rather qualitative objectives: to take on as many clients as possible,” says Madar. As to a potential physical presence in Scandinavia, that will come in time, depending on the results of ongoing development.

In a letter cited by the Wall Street Journal, the head of enforcement at the SEC, Robert Khuzami, has refused to disclose details to Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, Republican head of the legal commission, about the way in which the regulatory authority has made use of referrals from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) about questionable transactions by the hedge fund management firm SEC Capital Advisors. The senator says that he considers the response unacceptable.

Zvi Goffer, a former Galleon Group trader nicknamed Octopussy, as well as his brother Emanuel Goffer and Michael Kimelman been found guilty of insider trading, according to the Financial Times. They are accused of trading ahead of corporate takeover announcements of which they learnt from two Ropes & Gray lawyers advising the companies on the deals.

Markus Novak, who had served at Skandia at head of distribution clients, wealth management firms and banks in Germany, has joined JPMorgan Asset Management as second in command to Charles Neus, concentrating on sales to insurers and their networks.

30 institutional investors, with combined assets under management of about USD1trn, have sent a letter to companies of the Russell 1000 index, calling on them to accept the “new reality” of ESG (environmental, social and governance) risks, and to plan for it in their business planning. These issues cannot be considered areas “off the balance sheet,” the investors say. “They are rather concrete financial issues which represent both risks and opportunities for the long-term success of businesses,” they say. The Californian pension funds CalPERS and CalSTRS, which are among the signatories, had already announced last month that they had decided to better integrate ESG criteria into all of their investment decisions.

The alternative boutique BBVA & Partners (EUR200m in assets) from Saragossa is now wholly owned by BBVA Asset Management, which has been joined by its three partners, León Baltolomé, Pablo Gil and Juan Uguet, who had previously owned 30% of the former firm.Funds People also reports that the BBVA & Partners funds have been transferred to the Luxembourg Sicav from BBVA Durbana International Fund, which has a sales license for Spain. The funds include the BBVA & Partners Retorno Absoluto FIL (EUR21m), BBVA Partners Ahorro Dinámico, BBVA Partners Augustus, BBVA Partners Dynamic and BBVA Partners European Absolute Return.

The website e.fundresearch.at has announced that the Scandinavian institutional management firm DnB NOR Asset Management (EUR57bn in assets) in May acquired an operating license for Austria.Mike Judith, vice president of the firm and head of distribution for Germany, says that the nine best-known equities funds from the Carlson Funds brand are now available on the local market.

At the conclusion of a call for bids which opened on 22 October last year, for a renewed overlay management mandate, the French national pension fund, the Fonds de réserve pour les retraites (FRR), on 10 June announced that it has awarded the mandate to State Street Global Advisors France. The mandate will be for a renewable two-year period. The mission of the provider will be to inform and advise the FRR, to ensure currency risk management and to manage exposure of various asset classes defined by the FRR board, the fund says in a statement.