S&P a relevé la note de la société de gestion américaine Janus Capital Group de BB+ à BBB-, qui passe ainsi dans la catégorie «investment grade». Ses perspectives sont stables, selon l’agence de notation.
Le 11 janvier, Source a annoncé avoir recruté cinq responsables de haut niveau au sein de ses équipes de distribution pour suivre les marchés britannique, français, scandivave ainsi que les classes d’actifs obligations et matières premières.Pour l’institutionnel au Royaume-Uni et en Irlande, Georgina Courtenay-Evans, directeur, qui vient de Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Capital Markets.Pour la France, le Luxembourg, la Belgique et Monaco, Pierre Olivier Cohen, sera chargé en tant que directeur du suivi de la clientèle d’investisseurs institutionnels, de banques privées et de distributeurs de fonds dédiés aux particuliers. Il vient de Pioneer Investments.Kenneth Barner-Rasmussen, qui vient de Nordea Bank à Helsinki, est nommé directeur et sera chargé de la clientèle scandinaves.Pour l’obligataire, James Finch, responsable de l’équipe institutions financières chez Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) à Londres, rejoint Source en tant que directeur exécutif. Il auara pour mission princpale de développer la distribution de produits obligataires, tirant le meilleur parti du partenariat mis en place en décembre avec Pimco (groupe Allianz Global Investors).Enfin, Patrick Witteveen a rejoint Source comme directeur pour se consacrer à la vente des produits indiciels cotés investis sur les matières premières. Il était à la tête de l’activité de vente aux investisseurs institutionnels pour la Suisse, le Luxembourg et Singapour chez ETF Securities et a également travaillé quelque temps au sein de Kyte Group Securitites, collaborant à la mise en place de leur table de négociation sur les ETF à Genève.
La société de hedge funds londonienne ISAM, créée par Stanley Fink, un ancien de Man Group, a débauché deux employés de cette dernière société, rapporte le Financial Times. Alexander Lower, l’ancien directeur général des stratégies globales de Man, a rejoint ISAM en tant que directeur du développement, tandis que Riva Waller, ex responsable des gérants chez Man, a été nommée COO.
Selon l’Agefi, l’opérateur boursier londonien prévoit de lancer le processus de migration de sa plate-forme vers un nouveau système de cotation en février. Le système sera pleinement effectif le 14 février, ajoute le quotidien.
Ce matin, après plusieurs semaines de négociations, la société de gestion britannique Henderson a annoncé qu’un accord avait été trouvé pour l’acquisition de la totalité du capital de son concurrent Gartmore. Cela va créer un groupe de gestion d’actifs fort d’un encours d’environ 78,1 milliards de livres au 31 décembre 2010, dont 16,5 milliards apportés par Gartmore. Les actionnaires de Gartmore recevront 0,6667 nouvelle action Henderson pour chaque action Gartmore. En se fondant sur le cours de clôture du 11 janvier, cela valorise les actions Gartmore à 92,1 pence et le capital émis par Gartmore à environ 335,3 millions de livres. A l’issue de l’opération, les actionnaires de Gartmore détiendront environ 22,5 % du groupe né du rapprochement. Les administrateurs de Gartmore estiment que les conditions de l’acquisition sont justes et raisonnables et ont l’intention de recommander l’opération aux actionnaires. Henderson a déjà reçu le soutien de 60 % de l’actionnariat de Gartmore, dont Hellman & Friedman, son principal actionnaire. Pour Henderson, cette acquisition, qui intervient après celle de New Star en 2008, lui permet de renforcer encore sa présence dans la gestion d’actifs pour les particuliers britanniques et dans les produits de gestion absolue. Quant à Gartmore, cela lui permet d’assurer sa survie après le départ de plusieurs gérants clés et la chute de ses encours et du cours de ses actions.
Rufus Warner, l’un des fondateurs de SG Asset Management UK, a été recruté par Investment Solutions, une société de services d’investissement basée en Afrique du Sud, afin de diriger son développement au Royaume-Uni, rapporte Financial News.
BNY Mellon Trustee & Depositary (UK) a été sélectionné par by Daiwa Fund Asset Services, division de Daiwa Securities Group Global Asset Services, comme dépositaire pour ses fonds disposant d’un agrément de commercialisation au Royaume-Uni.De fait, Daiwa Fund Asset Services est en train d'élargir son service d’hébergement pour les fonds domiciliés en Irlande aux produits de droit britannique destinés prioritairement aux investisseurs institutionnels ou aux particuliers haut de gamme.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The French financial market regulator, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), on 11 January published modifications to its general regulations, laid out in the announcement dated 5 January 2011, which appeared in the 9 January 2011 issue of the Official Journal, which take on board new rules for securitisation organisms, which will eventually replace common debt funds, and which may take the form of securitisation companies or common securitisation funds. The AMF has also published instruction number 2011-01 of 11 January 2011, which applies articles 421-17-1 to 421-17-18 of the general regulations, which lay out conditions and procedures for the issuance of a visa for the prospectus and sales details for financial securities issued by securitisation organisms, the content and distribution conditions for prospectuses, in keeping with article 212-7 of the general regulations of the AMF, and periodical documents published by the securitisation firm, or in the case of a common securitisation fund, the management firm. The AMF has also published a series of “questions and answers from the AMF related to securitisation organisms” (AMF position no. 2011-12, dated 11 January 2011), which responds to frequently-asked questions on the subject for professionals. The issued discussed there largely are related to the role of the management firm, the role of the depositary, eligible assets, offering to the public or the admission to trading of financial securities, and sales of the financial securities issued.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The French minister of the economy, Christine Lagarde, on 11 January announced that a proposed bill to modernise the legal framework for asset management, in order to strengthen protections for investors and savers as well as the competitiveness of products and actors at the time that UCITS IV legislation is transposed into French law, has been submitted to public consultation. In addition to the legal requirements, the consultation aims to fulfil “a market strategy to develop the French asset management industry, set out by the High Committee” on 15 October 2010, the minister says in a statement. In addition to the proposed legislation, the ministry has also submitted for consultation a draft bill which lays out the details of taxation for sales of shares in Sicav funds to non-resident shareholders. These details aim to ensure a competitive tax regime for the Paris industry as host to European master funds. Responses to the present consultation are due by 11 February. The consultation will be followed by a second consultation which will focus on funds which do not fall under UCITS IV, and other French-registered collective investment organisms. It will begin in February, the French government says.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } With the Bankinter Podium Garantizado FI, Bankinter has released a fund which guarantees 100% of initial capital (as of 15 February 2011) after four years, for which the minimal subscription is set at EUR600, Cinco Días reports. Remuneration will be equivalent to a 1-to-1 scale with the appreciation of a basket of three equally-weighted shares (Telefónica, Iberdrola and Santander), up to 65%. If the revualation is more than that, the subscriber will receive the totality of initial net asset value at maturity. Bankinter will not charge a front-end fee for the fund, with a management commission of 0.15%.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } For its institutional retail fund Deka S-PropertyFund No. 2, the German management firm Deka Immobilien has acquired the Marseille building Le Patio (8,900 square metres), located in the Prado district, and leased to the Caisse Primaire Centrale d’Assurance-Maladie (CPCAM) and an affiliate of Electricité de France, for EUR26m. It is the first institutional investment for Deka in the southern French city. The vendor of the property is the management firm Custom House Capital.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Net inflows in the UK totalled GBP1.4bn in November, compared with GBP2.04bn in October, and GBP2.4bn twelve months previously, according to statistics from the British investment management association (IMA). Equities were the most popular asset class last month, with net inflows of GBP685m, compared with GBP475m in October. Net inflows to bonds fell to GBP160m, a net decline compared with an average of GBP588m in the past twelve months. For the second consecutive month, the emerging markets sector earned the best results in November, with net inflows of GBP337m. Commodities funds, for their part, posted record net inflows of GBP208m in the month under review. In the first eleven months of the year, net inflows totalled GBP21.4bn, compared with a record GBP23.7bn between January and November 2009. As of the end of November, assets under management totalled GBP554.9bn, compared with GBP556.9bn the previous month, and GBP467bn one year previously. Gross inflows via platforms totalled GBP3.4bn in November, compared with a monthly average of GBP3bn since the beginning of the year. The market share for platforms totalled 36% of gross inflows in November.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The manager of the Swip Financial fund since December, Michael Wasserman, is planning to reduce the fund’s exposure to the British financial sector and to emerging markets, Fundstrategy reports. The manager is also planning to take a closer interest in European banks and the real estate sector in Austria, Germany and Poland.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } In 2010, two new providers launched ETFs replicating the Nyse Euronext indices: the German firm ComStage (Commerzbank), and the Portuguese Espirito Santo Activos Financeiros (ESAF). In total, at the end of last year, NYSE Euronext listed 491 ETFs from 16 providers 56a times in Europe (Frankfurt had 761 ETFs), which represents a year-on-year increase of 9.35%: 111 ETFs were launched, while 47 were removed from listing. For the year 2010 overall, total trading volumes for ETFs totalled EUR97.9bn, compared with EUR76.9bn the previous year (+27.3%), while the number of transactions increased 23.5% to nearly 2.27 million. As of the end of December, total assets in all ETFs listed on European markets of NYSE Euronext were up 24.8% year on year, to EUR132.7bn. NYSE Euronext says that the average spread for all ETFs listed was 34.2 basis points last year.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } PineBridge Investments has announced the launch of a mergers and acquisitions arbitrage Newcits fund, the PineBridge Merger Arbitrage, Citywire reports. The fund is managed by Lan Cai, managing director.
Groupama Asset Management this morning announced the name of the successor to Romain Boscher, its former chief investment officer. He is Antoine de Salins, who since 2003 had been a board member at the French national pension fund, the Fonds de réserve pour les retraites (FRR), and chairman of its manager selection committee. In addition to being appoints as director of management at Groupama AM, he also becomes deputy CEO and a member of the board of directors. He will begin in his new position on 7 February.Boscher will join Amundi, the asset management affiliate 75% controlled by the Crédit Agricole group and 25% by Société Générale, in mid-January, as global head of equities, a newly-created position, according to several sources.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Swiss Life Asset Management (France) announced on Tuesday, 11 January that new members have joined the management firm: Gilles Frisch, head of the Asset Opportunities management unit, and Anne-Frédérique Cabasset Doyer, head of institutional clients. From 2 November 2010, Frisch, 41, who previously held the position of director of credit arbitrage management at Dexia Asset Management, is appointed to the Fixed Income Europe management department at Swiss Life AM. Doyer, 42, previously worked in the Exane group, where, a statement says, she was active in every step of the sales process for financial products, including management of calls for bids, design of sales assistance tools, adaptation of product offerings to local regulatory contexts, and creation of funds. At Swiss Life AM, she joins the sales team, and will report to Alain Konrad, director of business development.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The team led by Eric Wohleber, CEO of BlackRock in France, has gained the addition of David Disneur, as head of development for distribution clients (funds of funds, private banks, platforms). He will assist Gad Amar, head of the segment since September 2010.Disneur joined the iShares marketing team in London in 2008, before BGI was acquired by BlackRock, an acquisition which took effect in December 2009. There, he developed various strategic campaigns.Sylvain Favre-Gilly is promoted to managing director. He was previously director, in charge of relations with institutional clients.Samiye Dumaz, vice president in charge of the business support team, is appointed director.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Guillaume Ménabé has joined the US management firm Finisterre Capital, as junior portfolio manager of the Global Oopportunity Fund, Hedgeweek reports. He will also participate in the management of the Foreign Exchange and Commodities portfolio. Ménabé previously worked at JP Morgan in London.
The boards of Henderson and Gartmore announced this morning that agreement has been reached on the terms of a recommended acquisition by Henderson of the entire issued share capital of Gartmore. The combined estimated AUM of the new group is GBP78.1bn as at 31 December 2010, (GBP16.5bn for Gartmore). Under the terms of the Acquisition, Gartmore Shareholders will receive 0.6667 of a New Henderson Share for each Gartmore share. Based on the closing price of 138.2 pence per Henderson share on 11 January 2011, being the last business day prior to this announcement, the acquisition values each Gartmore share at 92.1 pence and values the issued share capital of Gartmore at approximately GBP335.3m.Gartmore shareholders will hold approximately 22.5 per cent of the enlarged share capital of Henderson immediately following completion of the acquisition, giving them the opportunity to share in the development of the enlarged business. Henderson has received irrevocable undertakings to support the scheme, in respect of a total of 218,252,401 Gartmore Shares representing, in aggregate, approximately 60 per cent. of the issued share capital of Gartmore including from Hellman & Friedman, Gartmore’s largest shareholder.Henderson has also secured commitments from the key Gartmore portfolio managers, who collectively have responsibility as lead managers for 84 per cent (including sub-advised AUM) of Gartmore’s Estimated AUM, that they will remain with the combined group and that they will agree to be bound by the scheme.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Rufus Warner, one of the founders of SG Asset Management UK, has been recruited by Investment Solutions, an investment services firm based in South Africa, to head its development in the United Kingdom, Financial News reports.
ISAM, the London hedge fund manager set up by Stanley Fink, has hired two senior employees from Man Group, where Mr Fink was formerly working, the Financial Times wrote.Alexander Lowe, the former chief executive of Man global strategies, has joined ISAM as business development director, while Riva Waller, former head of managers at Man, has joined to become chief operating officer.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } On 11 January, Source announced that it has recruited five high-level heads for its distribution teams, to focus on the British, French, and Scandinavian markets, and on the bond and commodity asset classes.For institutional distribution in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Ceorgina Courtenay-Evans, director, who comes from Friedman, Billings, Ramsey Capital markets, has been recruited.For France, Luxembourg, Belgium and Monaco, Pierre Olivier Cohen will be director in charge of institutional investor clients, private banks, and fund distributors dedicated to retail clients. He joins from Pioneer Investments.Kenneth Barner-Rasmussen, who joins from Nordea Bank in Helsinki, is appointed director, and will be in charge of Scandinavian clients. For bonds, James Finch, head of the financial instututions team at Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) in London, joins Source as executive director. He will primarily be in charge of developing distribution of bond products, relying for the better part on the partnership established in December with Pimco (Allianz Global Investors group). Patrick Witteveen joins Source as director, to concentrate on sales of publicly-traded index-based products investing in commodities. He was in charge of sales activities serving institutional investors in Switzerland, Luxembourg and Singapore at ETF Securities, and also spent some time at Type group Securities, assisting in the establishment of their ETF trading desk in Geneva.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } BNY Mellon Trustee & Despoitary (UK) has been selected by Daiwa Fund Asset Services, a division of Daiwa Securities Group Global Asset Services, as depositary for its funds licensed for sale in the United Kingdom. Daiwa Fund Asset Services is in the process of enlarging its hosting service for funds domiciled in Ireland as British products aimed primarily at institutional or high net worth private clients.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The German management firm Universal-Investment has announced the launch of a sustainable development bond fund, managed by the Swiss firm Banque Sarasin, the Sarasin-FairInvest-Bond-Universal-Fonds A, on 3 January 2011. The German-registered product invests 80% of its assets in securities denominated in euros, and 20% in bonds denominated in other currencies. Two thirds of the issuers, all of them top-ranked, are from OECD countries, while the remainder is a combination of bonds from international institutions, and to a lesser degree, corporate bonds. Characteristics Name: Sarasin-FairInvest-Bond-Universal-Fonds A ISIN Code: DE000A1C2XF8 Front-end fee: 3.50% Management commission: 0.65% Advising commission: 0.40%
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Hennessee hedge fund index gained 3.04% in December, and 10.05% for the year as a whole, while at the same time, the S&P 500 gained 6.53% in December and 12.79% for the twelve months. Hedge funds showed their largest monthly gain of the year, but finished behind traditional equities indices for the year. Charles Gradante, co-founder of Hennessee Group, says this development is characteristic of a market environment driven by momentum rather than fundamentals. Since March 2009, the Hennessee hedge fund index has gained 39%, compared with 71% for the S&P 500. But since the beginning of the credit crisis in September 2008, the index has gained 16%, compared with a loss of 2% for the S&P 500 index. The best-performing strategies for the year 2010 as a whole were event-driven, distressed, fixed income and emerging markets.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Australian management firm Perpetual, listed on the ASX, on 11 January announced the appointment of Chris Ryan as managing director and CEO, from 14 February. Ryan succeeds David Deverall, and will be a member of the board of directors. Deverall, who announced his plans to leave the firm on 23 June last year, will remain until 4 March to facilitate the transition. With more than 30 years of experience in financial services in the Asia-Pacific region, Ryan has developed a particular expertise in asset management. In particular, he directed asset management activities in the region for HSBC, Fidelity International and ING Investment Management. He most recently developed a consulting activity for Citibank. Assets under management at Perpetual totalled AUD27.3bn as of 30 November.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Aviva Investors has launched the Aviva Investors Sustainable Future Pan-European Absolute Return and Aviva Investors Global Convertibles Absolute Return Bond funds in Italy. They will be available to retail investors either via independent financial advisers or via banking networks, a press statement says. The two funds belong to the Absolute Return Ucits III range from Aviva Investors, which represents EUR2.9bn in assets. With the registration of these products, the complete Absolute Return range is now available on the Italian market, which is open both to institutional and to private investors.
p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } WestLB Mellon Asset Management KAG, a joint venture controlled 50/50 by BNY Mellon Asset Management and WestLB, on 11 January announced that three Irish-registered funds from the BNY Mellon AM group have been granted a sales license in Germany. The funds are the BNY Mellon Global Dynamic Fund, managed by Paul Brain at the British firm Newton Investment Management (see Newsmanagers of 30 September 2010), the Mellon Global Equity Higher Income Fund, managed by James Harries, also at Newton (see Newsmanagers of 4 August and 27 September 2010), and the BNY Mellon Latin America Infrastructures Fund, managed by the Brazilian affiliate BNY Mellon ARX Investimentos (See Newsmanagers of 11 January 2011). All three products carry a front-end fee of 5%. Management commission is 0.75% for the Global Dynamic Bond Fund, and 2% for each of the other two products.