Pour le semestre au 30 septembre 2010, Liontrust Asset Management affiche une perte avant impôt de 1,6 million de livres contre un bénéfice avant impôt de 0,7 million et des recettes de commissions de performance de 199.000 livres contre 2,24 millions.L’encours au 30 septembre ressortait à presque 1,13 milliard de livres contre 2,18 milliards un an plus tôt, mais il atteint presque 1,25 milliard de livres au 23 novembre. De plus, le gestionnaire britannique fait état de souscriptions nettes de 41 millions de livres au 23 novembre depuis le début de l’exercice, avec plus de 76 millions depuis début octobre.Pour le CEO John Ions, la perte du premier semestre de l’exercice doit être considérée dans le contexte des mutations rapides intervenues dans la société durant les derniers mois (notamment avec la prime de départ de 665 000 livres attribuée à l’ancien CEO Nigel Legge), de l’augmentation des dépenses de marketing pour générer des souscriptions, des nouvelles activités et du retour à des souscriptions nettes. L’autre raison de la perte, bien entendu tient au fait que les actifs sous gestion ont diminué, une tendance qui a pu être inversée depuis lors. Cela s’est traduit par des souscriptions nettes de 9 millions de livres en juillet-septembre, ce qui a été le premier semestre positif à cet égard depuis le premier trimestre calendaire de 2008. De fait, ajoute le CEO, le dernier exercice où Liontrust a enregistré des souscriptions nettes a été celui de 2003-2004. John Ions a aussi indiqué qu’en raison du succès remporté jusqu'à présent par la campagne de marketing, la société a décidé d’affecter 0,7 million supplémentaire à ce budget pour le second semestre (au 31 mars), de sorte que l’augmentation des dépenses de marketing durant l’ensemble de l’exercice aura été de 1,2 million de livres.

Selon Investment Week, la suppression de l'équipe actions mondiales dirigée par Ross Hollyman, qui a rejoint Liontrust en provenance de GAM en octobre 2009, a couté plus de 781.000 livres à la société de gestion en primes de licenciement et en frais de fermeture de structures à Gernesey et Jersey. L'équipe gérait moins d’un millions de dollars d’encours.

Selon Ucits Hedge, Trafalgar Capital Management a annoncé s’être allié à Chris Poil pour lancer son premier Ucits, le Trafalgar Quadrant Fund, un fonds long/short sur les actions européennes, sera principalement investi sur les valeurs britanniques (FTSE 350) avec un biais sur les entreprises en situation de redressement. Chris Poil a notamment été président de l’équipe de gestion globale d’ING Baring Asset Management et était entre 2006 et 2009 conseiller auprès de Cheyne Capital.

Selon Fundstrategy, Skandia Investment Group (SIG) a investi 19 millions de livres dans le fonds Liontrust Credit Absolute Return afin de le protéger contre les perspectives incertaines des obligations d'État. En effet, le fonds piloté par Simon Thorp et James Sclater, qui investit dans des obligations crédit européen de type long /short, souffre comme l’ensemble de la classe d’actifs, des tensions liées dans certaines zones au problème de dette souveraine de la zone euro. SIG va, entre autres, ajouter le fonds de Liontrust dans ses fonds de fonds diversifiés, obligataires à rendement et alternatifs.

Selon L’Echo, la gestion de portefeuille chez Petercam est une nouvelle fois remise en question. Quelques clients mécontents de la performance de leur portefeuille se sont tournés vers Albert Biebuyck, le fondateur d’Investor Protection Europe, une société de défense des investisseurs. Le dossier porte sur les conventions de gestion de la société de Bourse, notamment celles proposant une gestion protégée. Les clients déçus se sont retrouvés avec des obligations notées en dessous de «BBB».Le fondateur d’Investor Protection a indiqué à L’Echo qu’il dépose ce jeudi une réclamation collective au service de médiation, dépendant de la CBFA.

La boutique asiatique Hamon Asset Management a lancé un nouveau fonds rendement absolu sur la Grande Chine, rapporte Citywire. Le Hamon Greater China Absolute Return Fund, basé au Luxembourg, sera géré par le trio de spécialistes de la Chine de la société, Nina Wu, Lisa Jiang and William Liu.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Major specialists in high-risk assets are meeting in Madrid to negotiate the acquisition of defaulted debt accumulated by Spanish entities in need of liquidity, Expansión reports.Among the vulture funds that have swooped down on Spain in the past few days are Fortress, Lone Star, Varde Partners and Carval, as well as platforms such as TDX and Lindorff. Apollo, for its part, is planning to set up a local team to manage its portfolios.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Since the end of September, assets in the three Sicavs owned by Amancio Ortega have fallen by one third, to EUR168m, Expansión reports. The founder and head of Inditex has withdrawn a total of nearly EUR1bn since 2008 from Keblar, Alazán Inversiones 2001 and Gramela Inversiones 2004, either because his other participations, such as Habitat, needed liquidity, or in order to reinvest in real estate outside Spain.

The Edhec-Risk Institute has released a publication which proposes a formal analysis of the optimal investment policy and risk management practices of sovereign wealth funds, Hedgeweek reports.The results suggest that the investment strategy for a sovereign wealth fund should involve a state-dependent allocation to three building blocks: a performance-seeking portfolio (typically heavily invested in equities), an endowment-hedging portfolio (customised to meet the risk exposure in the sovereign wealth fund endowment streams), and a liability-hedging portfolio (heavily invested in bonds for interest rate hedging motives, and in assets exhibiting attractive inflation-hedging properties when the implicit or explicit liabilities of the sovereign wealth fund exhibit inflation indexation).

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } ICFA reports that Northern Trust has announced the appointment of Peter Cherecwich as director of its global fund services (GFS) division. He will be based in Chicago, and replaces Wilson Leech, who has been appointed CEO for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Legg Mason has announced the creation of the Legg Mason Retirement Advisory Council, which will aim to generate ideas in the area of retirement. The think tank is composed of 14 personalities from the world of finance, specialised in this area. It will meet every quarter to debate products, services and practices in the industry. The 14 members are Ted Benna, president of the Malvern Benefits Corporation 401(k) Association, Thomas Clark Jr., president of Lockton Financial Group, Paul D’Aiutolo, vice-president of UBS Wealth Management, Charles Epstein, founder of the 401(k) Coach Program, Robert L. Francis, chief operating officer of National Retirement Partners, Joseph Frustaglio, vice-president and head of Retirement Plans Sales, National Sales Manager at Nationwide, Gary Kleinschmidt, head of retirement specialists at Legg Mason, Dave Master, managing director strategy and business development at Legg Mason, Joseph Masterson, senior vice president at Diversified Investment Advisors, Joe Mrozek, national sales manager – retirement at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Edward O’Connor, managing director, head of retirement services at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Michael Shamburger, vice president of National Sales Manager 401k, The Hartford Financial Services Group, Scott Sides, senior vice president and corporate benefits director at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, and Marcia Wagner, managing partner at Wagner Law Group.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Wall Street Journal reports that Irving Picard, the legally-appointed trustee for victims of Bernard Madoff, is seeking USD2bn from UBS in court. He accuses the Swiss bank of having actively participated in the fraud by lending legitimacy to certain feeder funds which invested with Madoff.

Don Ching Trang Chu, an Asia and technology expert at Primary Global Research, has been arrested by the FBI on conspiracy charges, says the Financial Times. US federal prosecutors allege that in July 2009, Mr Chu arranged for a hedge fund trader to obtain revenue, sales and margin figures from an official at a publicly traded technology company several hours before the figures were officially announced.

Wisely adjusting exposure to various asset classes may well be the most useful part of the investment process for hedge funds in the long term. This flexibility has more likelihood of having an impact on value than stock-picking or strategic exposure to equities, according to a study by Mellon Capital Management Corporation, a boutique from BNY Mellon Asset Management.Eric S. Goodbar, hedge fund strategist at Mellon CM, says well-made and correctly timed allocation decisions are likely to reduce the correlation between the performance of a hedge fund and that of equities or bonds. Unfortunately, insists the co-author of the study along with Karsten Jenske, senior quantitative analyst at Mellon AM, many hedge fund portfolios have a large static allocation to equities, which increases correlation with the performance of this asset class.The study finds that hedge fund managers who successfully reduce the correlation of their portfolios with the performance of traditional investments in equities are more likely to avoid a deterioration in their performance in falling markets than those who retain a static allocation to equities. Jeske says increasing the importance of asset allocation and reducing strategic allocations to equities and bonds is a way to reduce risks for the portfolio and position it in a way that better reflects the expertise of the manager than movements in the market.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } For more than one year, Edmond de Rothschild Asset Mangement (Edram) has included a dialogue/engagement approach to ESGP themes (environment, social, governance and stakeholders) as a part of the management of one of its flagship funds, Tricolore Rendement.The French asset management firm today officially announces that the fund has been made a part of its SRI product range. “Tricolore Rendement, which represents the interests of a significant number of shareholders, has a longstanding track record and a privileged position as an investor in French businesses. The integration of this approach is thus a natural step,” says Pierre Nebout, deputy director and head of European equities management at Edram.“Other funds may also eventually integrate this approach into their management process,” Nebout tells Newsmangers, “even if we have not yet taken any concrete steps in this direction.”As of 30 October, the management firm had EUR2.7bn in assets in its open-ended SRI funds.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The management firm Pimco, which has recently moved into equities management, on Wednesday, 24 November announced the launch of the EqS Pathfinder FundTM and Pimco EqS Pathfinder Europe FundTM, as Newsmanagers reported at the beginning of summer (see, e.g., Newsmanagers of 21 June 2010). The firm had recruited Anne Gudefin and Charles Lahr, two value managers from Templeton Mutual Series, a few months earlier. With the two funds, the firm offers its clients an “ultra-flexible” deep value equities investment strategy. Concretely, the Pathfinder strategy is the active equities strategy developed by Pimco, whose objective is to generate high returns by identifying shares which are trading below their value and investment opportunities in the areas of distressed debt and merger arbitrage, a statement says. The management of the EqS Pathfinder FundsTM from Pimco rely on bottom-up analysis of shares and a deep value philosophy and investment process, and invest primarily in equities, complemented by investments in distressed debt, merger arbitrage, and tactical strategies such as coverage. The two funds come as additions to the Global Investor Series (GIS) from Pimco, which complies with UCITS III regulations. The Sicav, domiciled in Dublin, now has 38 sub-funds, with assets of EUR46.8bn. The funds offer daily liquidity.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Dow Jones Credit Suisse hedge fund index for October came out at 449.66, up 1.92% in October, compared with gains of 3.43% in September, and cumulative gains of 8.02% in the first ten months of the year. Nine strategies out of 10 have posted gains in October, with the only losses for the dedicated short bias strategy, down 3.60%. The strongest gains (4.29%) were for managed futures. In January-October, dedicated short bias is down 15.64%, while equity market neutral has lost 0.03%. In the period under review, the top three were global macro funds, with returns of 11.10%, managed futures and bond arbitrage, with gains of 11% each.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Stewart Cowley, manager of the Global Strategic Bond fund at Old Mutual Asset Managers, has announced that he has liquidated the positions the fund had held on Spanish debt, according to Fundstrategy. As of the end of September, his portfolio still contained 3.8% Spanish government bonds.

According to Ucits Hedge, Trafalgar Capital Management has announced it has teamed up with Chris Poil to launch its first UCITS fund. The Trafalgar Quadrant Fund, a European Long/Short UCITS equity fund, mainly invests in UK Equities drawn and focuses on recovery situations. Chris Poil was chairman of the Global Senior Management Team at ING Baring Asset Management. He acted as investment consultant to Cheyne Capital from 2006-2009.

According to Ucits Hedge, Heptagon Capital, a London based USD2.7Bn specialist asset management business, has announced the launch of a new Irish UCITS fund which will be managed by Yacktman Asset Management. Based in Austin, Texas, Yacktman is a long-only US Equity manager, which is 100% owned by its employees, and has over USD5.5Bn in assets under management.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Australian management firm Ankura Capital Pty Ltd, an affiliate of BNY Mellon Asset Management, has obtained a management mandate from Russell Investments for an allocation from the Australian Shares Enhances Income Fund, BNY Mellon AM has announced. It is the second mandate for Akura’s high-yield Australian equities strategy. In May, the management firm also received a high yield mandate from IPAC for its diversified high yeild fund Axa Generator. Assets at Ankura for Australian and Japanese equities total about AUD1bn. The firm, based in Sydney, manages institutional funds, primarily for Australian clients.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Carmignac Gestion has announced the arrival in its trading department of Alexandre Pitois-Jones. Before joining the French management firm, Pitois-Jones was an equities derivatives trader at Amundi Asset Management. His arrival brings the number of traders in the trading department, led by Nicolas Courbon, to four.

The structure officially launched in early November by Christian Bito, Vladimir Danesi and Jean-Luc Fargin, CBT Gestion (see Newsmanagers of 20 September and 8 November), has already collected EUR25m, of which EUR1.8m are for its first FCP fund, CBT action euro vol 20.Other products will follow, possibly in January, with the objective of extending the strategy to diversified and open-ended products which would also use the management approach oriented to volatility, with a supplementary layer of tactical investment.

Reeves Investment Management (RIM) has appointed Mike Sargeant as investment director with responsibility for developing its current range of investment strategies. He will also be a member of the senior management team responsible for the asset allocation and fund selection of the company’s discretionary portfolios.Prior to joining RIM, Mike Sargeant was managing director of Pharon IFA for 6 years from 2004, and also managing director of its associated company, Lawrence House Fund Managers, an independent boutique investment house dedicated to supporting IFAs, prior to its acquisition by Brooks Macdonald Asset Management in September 2009. RIM is part of Reeves & Co LLP, an accountancy firm. It provides discretionary management services to Reeves & Co clients, especially those advised by Reeves Financial Planning, the firm’s IFA arm. RIM currently has over GBP70million invested in portfolios across three main investment strategies, Income; Balanced; Growth, with exposure to most asset classes through the use of collective investments and structured products.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Investment Week reports that laying off the global equities team led by Ross Hollyman, who joined Liontrust from GAM in October 2009, cost the management firm more than GBP781,000 in severance pay and costs to close down the structures in Guernsey and Jersey. The team managed less than USD1m in assets.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } For the half-year ending on 30 September 2010, Liontrust Asset Management has posted a pre-tax loss of GBP1.6m, compared with pre-tax profits of GBP0.7m, and performance commission revenues of GBP199,000, compared with GBP2.24m. Assets as of 30 September totalled nearly GBP1.13bn, compared with GBP2.18bn one year earlier, but they totalled nearly GBP1.25bn as of 23 November. In addition, the British management firm has posted net subscriptions of GBP41m since the beginning of the period as of 23 November, with more than GBP76m since the beginning of October. CEO John Ions says losses in the first half of the fiscal year should be viewed in the context of the rapid changes which have been taking place at businesses in the past few months, an increase in marketing spending to generate subscriptions, new activities, and a rebound in net subscriptions. The other reason for the loss is, of course, related to the fact that assets under management have declined, in a trend which has since then successfully been reversed. This has led to net subscriptions of GBP9bn in July-September, which was the first positive quarter since the first calender quarter of 2008. The CEO adds that the last fiscal year in which Liontrust posted positive net subscriptions was 2003-2004. Ions also says that due to the success of the marketing campaign so far, the firm has decided to allocate a further GBP0.7m to its budget for second half (until 31 March), meaning that the increased total marketing spending throughout the period will have been GBP1.2m.

According to Financial News, Man Group, that recently acquired GLG, is offering its employees the change to relocate abroad, GLG co-founder Pierre Lagrange told a roundtable of journalists this morning. He added that «very few» have moved so far.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Agefi Switzerland reports that Pictet & Cie is rethinking its alternative management platform. Nicolas Campiche explains that the structure he is responsible for (Pictet Alternative Investments) would like to increase the percentage of its investments directed to “new and less well-known” managers to 60%, up from about half of the EUR10bn it currently has under management. The move will come to the detriment of established stars of the hedge fund industry. “We are trying to reorient our portfolio a little bit to focus more on less well-known, smaller, more flexible entities,” the CEO has told the news agency Bloomberg. Pictet is seeking flexibility and reactivity in an effort to improve returns. “It is a typical post-crisis situation,” says Campiche. “People tend to focus too much on risk and not enough on returns.” According to a survey by Pertrac Financial Solutions, hedge funds with less than EUR100m earned annualised performance of 16% between 1996 and 2007, compared with 11.5% for managers in charge of more than EUR500m in assets.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Asian boutique Hamon Asset Management has launched a new absolute return fund focused on Greater China, Citywire reports. The Hamon Greater China Absolute Return Fund, based in Luxembourg, will be managed by the firm’s trio of China specialists, Nina Wu, Lisa Jiang and William Liu.

Ils sont estimés à 126 milliards de dollars par DTZ pour 2011-2013. La situation apparaît assez tendue au Royaume-Uni, en Irlande et en Espagne