Selon le Financial Times, le fonds souverain du Qatar chercherait à obtenir une licence du gouvernement chinois pour investir 5 milliards de dollars en Chine. La limite par licence est actuellement d’un milliard de dollars, mais la Chine souhaite l’augmenter pour amorcer l’ouverture du pays aux investissements étrangers.

Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (Adia), le plus grand fonds souverain de la planète, fort de près de 630 milliards de dollars de capitaux devrait afficher un rendement faible, voire proche du taux sans risque en 2011, rapporte Les Echos. Pour sa part, sa performance moyenne de long terme sur vingt ans a reculé nettement de 7,6 % à 6,9 %. Ce ne serait pas une surprise car les fonds souverains qui publient leur performance annuelle, une minorité dont ne fait pas partie Adia, ont annoncé des rendements limités ou négatifs en 2011. Le fonds pétrolier norvégien a enregistré une contre-performance de 2,5 % alors que ses homologues coréen et néo-zélandais perdaient respectivement 3,3 % et 5,3 %.

Après le March Patrimonio Renta, March Gestión de Fondos a fait enregistrer par la CNMV le 22 juin le fonds March Patrimonio Renta 2, également un hedge fund de droit espagnol (FIL) qui investit en dépôts à vue ou avec une échéance inférieure à un an auprès d'établissements de crédit de l’UE ou de l’OCDE assujettis à des normes prudentielles et en instruments monétaires cotés ou non, sous réserve qu’ils soient liquides. Le portefeuille peut aussi être investi en obligations souveraines ou privées, mais il ne peut pas comporter de parts d’autres OPCVM et n’encourt aucun risque de change.Le fonds a été créé le 17 mai.CaractéristiquesDénomination : March Patrimonio Renta 2, FILCode Isin : ES0160934008Taux butoir : Euribor + 50 points de baseSouscription minimale : 100.000 eurosCommission de gestion : 0,6 %Pénalité de sortie : 0,50 % du 15/07/12 au 15/10/12

Pour son fonds immobilier offert au public UniImmo: Europa, l’allemand Union Investment Real Estate (UIRE) va investir 69,7 millions d’euros dans une extension de 8.649 mètres carrés du centre commercial qui sera livrée fin 2014 Les Grands Prés à Mons, en Belgique. Le fonds possède déjà les 17.820 mètres carrés existants de cet ensemble. L’extension permet d’escompter des recettes de loyers supplémentaires de l’ordre de 4,5 millions d’euros par an, a indiqué Frank Billand, membre de la direction générale d’UIRE.

Turgot Asset Management annonce le lancement de Turgot Smidcaps France. Ce fonds actions, éligible au PEA, a pour objectif d’offrir une performance moyenne de 7% à long terme. Géré par Marion Casal, il est principalement exposé aux petites et moyennes valeurs françaises dites «de croissance» dont la capitalisation au moment de l’investissement est inférieure à 5 milliards d’euros. Le FCP pourra intervenir sur des futures et options négociés sur des marchés réglementés pour couvrir, exposer ou surexposer (jusqu’à 110%) le portefeuille au risque actions ou taux. Caractéristiques Code Isin : FR0011152404Droits d’entrée : 2 % maximumFrais de sortie : néantsFrais de gestion : 2,40 % par an

Le 22 juin, l’abaissement du capital de Julius Baer Group décidé par l’assemblée générale du 11 avril a été déclaré au registre du commerce du canton de Zurich. Cette opération prend la forme de l’annulation de 10,24 millions d’actions nominatives de la société. Désormais, Julius Baer Group affiche un capital social de presque 3,93 millions de francs suisses répartis sur 196,39 millions d’actions nominatives de 0,02 franc suisse chacune.

Après un premier investissement début mai dans le fonds de crédit européen d’Eiffel Investment Group, Alain Leclair, Président de la SICAV EMERGENCE annonce la signature d’un second partenariat d’incubation avec la société Bernheim, Dreyfus & Co. EMERGENCE investit 30 millions d’euros dans le fonds DIVA SYNERGY UCITS, ce qui porte les actifs de ce fonds à environ 40 millions d’euros lui permettant d’accélérer ainsi son développement en répondant à la demande croissante provenant d’investisseurs institutionnels européens. Agrée par l’AMF en juin 2011, le fonds DIVA SYNERGY UCITS déploie une stratégie de performance absolue, décorrélée des fluctuations de marché, spécialisée sur les opérations de fusions/acquisitions en Europe et en Amérique du Nord. Le fonds offre une liquidité quotidienne et investit ses actifs selon deux sous-stratégies : l’arbitrage sur opérations annoncées et les cibles de transactions anticipées. La mise en place de ces stratégies repose sur une analyse fondamentale rigoureuse et un processus d’investissement clair et discipliné. Le fonds DIVA SYNERGY est aujourd’hui bien positionné pour tirer profit du rebond attendu de l’activité de fusions/acquisitions. Les grandes entreprises et les fonds de private equity disposent actuellement d’importantes liquidités, prêtes à être investies. Les taux d’intérêt bas, les valorisations boursières raisonnables, les dynamiques sectorielles de consolidation et d’acquisitions de parts de marché alimenteront cette croissance des volumes d’opérations de haut de bilan. L’ensemble de ces facteurs devraient permettre d'évoluer dans un contexte particulièrement favorable aux opérations de M&A. DIVA SYNERGY UCITS est dirigé par deux gérants aux profils complémentaires: Lionel Melka, ancien banquier d’affaires avec une longue expérience dans le conseil en fusions/acquisitions et Amit Shabi, professionnel expérimenté sur les marchés de capitaux. Ils s’appuient sur une équipe robuste composée de plusieurs analystes financiers et professionnels du contrôle des risques. Bernheim, Dreyfus & Co s’organise également pour son développement en Europe. Par ailleurs, Lionel Melka et Amit Shabi sont co-auteurs de l’ouvrage de référence ???L’arbitrage sur fusions et acquisitions’ (éditions Economica) publié dans le cadre de leurs enseignements à l’Université Paris- Dauphine. Bernheim, Dreyfus & Co. gère également cette stratégie dans un fonds international et a déjà reçu de nombreuses récompenses au titre de cette gestion, comme le prix du meilleur fonds européen de performance absolue remis par Hedgeweek en 2012 et le prix du fonds de Merger Arbitrage le plus performant dans le monde sur 2009-2011 décerné par BarclayHedge. Le fonds DIVA SYNERGY UCITS a été sélectionné à l’issue d’un processus rigoureux de sélection de plus de 90 dossiers analysés par NewAlpha Asset Management, gérant délégataire du compartiment. Le Comité d’Investissement, composé des investisseurs d’Emergence, a validé cette proposition d’investissement lors de sa dernière réunion.

Threadneedle has recruited Moira Gorman as director in charge of clients, Investment Europe reports. Gorman will be responsible for developing relationships between Threadneedle and British municipal pension funds. She previously worked at State Street Global Advisors (SSgA).

The Baring Dynamic Asset Allocation (DAA) Fund, launched in January 2007, now has over GBP5bn in assets, Baring Asset Management announced on 18 June.This flagship fund from the Barings range has attracted GBP1.1bn in net subscriptions in 2011, and GBP1bn year to date. In the 12 months to the end of April, the product has seen inflows of over GBP500m from local authorities, including those of Devon, Dorset and Wiltshire.The performance of the fund since launch comes to 6.6% per year, compared with 0.86% for the FTSE All Share Index, with volatility of 7.4%, compared with 17.4% for the index.

For its open-ended real estate fund UniImmo: Europa, the German asset management firm Union Investment Real Estate (UIRE) will invest EUR69.7bn in an 8,649 square metre extension to the Les Grands Prés shopping centre in Mons, Belgium, which will be completed in late 2014. The fund already owns the 17,820 square metres of the facility. The extension will bring in additional rental revenues estimated at EUR4.5m per year, says Frank Billand, a board member at UIRE.

AllianceBernstein L.P. and AllianceBernstein Holding L.P. have jointly announced that Peter S. Kraus has been elected to another five-year term as chairman and CEO, from January 2014. He was initially elected in December 2008, until December 2013. The new term as chairman and CEO is largely similar to the current one. In his new role, Kraus will be paid a total of over 2.72 million shares in AllianceBernstein. His annual salary will remain at USD275,000, and he will receive no cash bonuses.

Carmignac Gestion has announced the appointment of two independent directors: Jean-Baptiste de Franssu and David Loggia.De Franssu, currently chairman of the INCIPIT company, is the former president of the European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA), and until October 2011 served as CEO of Invesco Europe. “We are pleased that Jean-Baptiste de Franssu will be bringing his vision of the industry and its pan-European challenges, both in terms of regulations and the long-term outlooks for promoting open architecture and independent distribution, to our board of directors,” a statement from Carmignac Gestion says.Loggia is a former manager at Carmignac Gestion. He joined the French asset management firm as an analyst for European equities in 2003, and then served as co-manager of the Carmignac Grande Europe fund from 2005 to May 2011 (see Newsmanagers of 2 September 2011). His arrival on the board of directors “is a sign of the long-term engagement of our manager shareholders to the firm,” Carmignac Gestion says.Carmignac Gestion, which has been paying particularly close attention to its international development, says that the objective is to strengthen governance on its board of directors, “with the presence of several independent administrators with long experience in the asset management or wealth advising sector,” the Paris-based firm says.

George U. “Gus” Sauter, the managing director and chief investment officer at Vanguard, has announced that he will be retiring on 31 December 2012. The global investment management groups led by Sauter have a current total of USD1.6trn in assets, out of a total of USD2.1trn managed by Vanguard. Mortimer J. “Tim” Buckley, managing director, will take over as CIO following the departure of Sauter.

In the week to 20 June, investors were not short of bad news, including slowed growth in Germany and China, the Spanish banking crisis, warnings about corporate results, and signs of weakness in the US economy. But investors concluded that in suh an environment, a further wave of quantitative easing is more likely.Equity funds overall for the first time since mid-March posted net subscriptions for the week, according to EPFR Global. European equity funds underwent redemptions for their fifth consecutive week, but they were partly offset by subscriptions from institutional investors to German equity funds, totalling USD869m.Bond funds posted subscriptions in the week ending on 20 June totalling USD4.14bn, of which three quarters were absorbed by US bond funds.Money market funds underwent outflows of USD33.43bn, their highest level since the first week of August 2011. Several factors contributed to this development including the end of the tax quarter in the United States and prospects of further quantitative easing which will wipe out already limited returns.

State Street Corporation on Monday announced that Emirates NBD Asset Management in Jersey has selected State Street Global Services in the Channel Islands to provide fund administration and securities custody services for its funds with multiple sub-funds, both traditional and Sharia-compliant.

Gottex is on course to achieve its cost reduction objectives, but “is expecting a small operating loss in interim 2012 results,” Agefi Switzerland reports. The firm has announced a share repurchase operation on the market as part of its acquisition of Penjing Asset Management, to reduce the diluting effects of the issue of new shares to acquire the firm.

In order to respond to strategic changes related to the Solvency II directive, the asset management sector will have to work a lot more closely with European insurance companies, according to a report prepared by KPMG and published on 25 June by the European fund and asset management association (EFAMA).Solvency II should not be considered an issue that concerns only insurers, since the data supplied to insurers by third parties, including asset management firms, must also comply with the requirements set for insurance companies.Peter de Proft, president of EFAMA, comments that “the rollout of the Solvency II directive will open the way to a new type of relationship between insurers and asset managers. One of the objectives of EFAMA is to put investors at the core of strategy. As insurance companies represent 42% of total assets under management for institutional investors, asset managers can considerably increase their presence and their credibility by working closely with insurers on this directive. As buy-side actors in the sector, we hope to strengthen the long-term confidence of our insurer clients, and encourage political leaders to support the development of long-term investment.”The report lays out the major challenges which asset management firms will need to confront, including data management, transmission of data, and look-through data. In terms of data management, asset management firms will need to be able to demonstrate that their data management processes are at least equivalent to those of insurers.In the chapter on data transmission, asset management firms are said to need to provide complete data sets on a monthly basis, with the trend being towards a transmission on the third working day of each month. This will have a considerable impact on the operational models at asset management firms and administrators, insofar as the information currently available on this day of the month does not necessarily have the required granulatrity and level of quality required by Solvency II.

Following the March Patrimonio Renta, March Gestión de Fondos on 22 June registered the March Patrimonio Renta 2 fund with the CNMV. The new product is also a Spanish hedge fund (FIL) which invests in savings deposits or debt with a remaining time to maturity of one year from EU or OECD credit institutes which are subject to prudential standards, and in public or private money market instruments, so long as they are liquid. The portfolio may also invest in sovereign or private bonds, but cannot invest in shares in other OPCVM funds, and will not be exposed to currency risks.The fund was created on 17 May.CharacteristicsName: March Patrimonio Renta 2, FILISIN code: ES0160934008Hurdle rate: Euribor + 50 basis pointsManagement commission: 0.6%Withdrawal penalty: 0.50% from 15 July 2012 to 15 October 2012

On 29 June, Swiss & Global Asset Management is planning to launch four funds in the new Julius Bär Smart Equity ETF range on the Xetra electronic trading platform from Deutsche Börse, which will be the first actively-managed ETFs to be listed in Frankfurt, Fondsprofessionell reports.Each of the UCITS IV-compliant funds will invest in up to 200 holdings, without using derivatives; securities lending is also forbidden. The shares will be selected from among equities of the MSCI benchmark, using both a systematic trend identification technique and a systematic value type strategy.The Luxembourg-registered Julius Bär Smart Equities ETFs, which are managed by a team led by Stefan Fröhlich, have a sales license for Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom. There are plans to register the products in other jurisdictions.

Since 25 June, the Pimco German Government Bond Index Source ETF is available for trading on the XTF segment of the Xetra electronic trading platform from Deutsche Börse. It replicates the Markit iBoxx € Germany Index, which focuses on German federal bonds issued in euros, with a remaining time to maturity of at least one year, from issue of over EUR2bn. The addition brings the number of ETFs listed in Frankfurt to 985.CharacteristicsName: PIMCO German Government Bond Index Source ETFISIN code: IE00B87LHK09TER: 0.15%

J. Ezra Merkin, former chairman of GMAC Financial Services, has agreed to pay USD410m to settle a lawsuit filed by the New York attorney general, accusing him of channeling billions of dollars belonging to his clients, without their knowledge, to the business of Bernard Madoff, via Merkin’s firm, Gabriel Capital Corp, the Wall Street Journal reports. The settlement does not apply to a lawsuit filed by Irving Picard, court-appointed trustee for the business interests of Madoff.

Turgot Asset Management has announced the launch of Turgot Smidcaps France. The equity fund, eligible for investment from PEA contracts, aims to provide average performance of 7% over the long term. It is managed by Marion Casal, and is primarily exposed to French “growth” small and midcaps, whose capitalisation at the time of the investment is under EUR5bn. The FCP may invest in futures and options traded on regulated markets, to hedge, expose or overexpose the portfolio (up to 110%) to equity or fixed income risk. Characteristics ISIN code: FR0011152404 Front-end fee: maximum 2% Withdrawal penalty: none Management fees: 2.40% per year

JP Morgan will be liquidating its Asia Equity Fund, with total assets of USD481m. Mutual Fund Wire reports that the product has recently undergone significant redemptions. As of the end of May, it has USD755m in assets.

The US firm Columbia Management (USD344bn in assets), like the British firm Threadneedle an affiliate of Ameriprise Financial, has announced the launch of the open-ended Columbia Risk Allocation Fund (acronym: CRAAX for A-class shares), which functions on the basis of an equally-weighted exposure to risk in various asset classes (equities, bonds, and inflation-hedging instruments).The objective is to avoid a concentration of risk in a single category of supports, while generating attractive performance over the long term, with lower risk than for a traditional diversified fund.The fund is managed by Todd White, with the assistance of Anwiti Bahugna, Fred Copper, Kent Peterson and Beth Vanney as co-managers.Maximum front-end fee is 5.75%, and management commission is 1% for A-class shares.

The New York-based firm Global X Funds on 21 June decided to modify the underlying index, as well as the name, acronym, total expense ratio and investment objective for the Global X S&P/TSX Venture 30 Canada ETF, which is becoming the Global X Junior Miners ETF.The index replicated by the fund is now the Solactive Junior Miners, which tracks the evolution of shares in mining sector small caps worldwide, while the index used previously, the S&P/TSX Venture 30 Index, was focused on Canadian small caps in the mining and energy sectors. The new index has 100 shares, compared with 30 for the previous one.The acronym of the fund on NYSE Arca becomes JUNR, replacing TSXV, and the TER is being lowered to 0.69% from 0.75%.

Société Générale Securities Services (SGSS) is launching a “key-ready” range to allow asset management firms and third-party managers who do not have a Luxembourg UCITS passport to create, manage and release UCITS-compliant funds. The UCITS label will allow the asset management firms to release UCITS funds in all member countries of the European Union. It also offers guarantees to investors in terms of transparency, risk and liquidity management. The creation of the funds will be undertaken by Société Générale Private Wealth Management, an asset management firm based in Luxembourg.

The European Securities Markets Authority (ESMA) on 25 June announced that it is launching a consultation on technical standards for regulations of European market infrastructures (EMIR), which aim to introduce higher levels of transparency and improved risk management in the over-the-counter derivatives market.The consultation will remain open until 5 August, and the final proposal of technical standards is slated to be presented to the European Commission by 30 September 2012.

The Financial Times reports that the Qatar sovereign fund is seeking a license from the Chinese government to invest USD5bn in China. The license limit is currently USD1bn, but China is seeking to increase that amount to finance further opening of the country to foreign investors.

The US firm Van Eck Global has announced that it has added five ETFs of the Market Vectors range already listed on NYSE Arca to the list of ETFs available to qualified investors in Mexico, bringing the total number of tracker funds available in Mexico to 25. The funds are the Market Vectors Oil Services ETF (acronym: OIH), with assets of over USD1.07bn, the Market Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH) with USD362m, and Market Vectors Pharmaceutical ETF (PPH), with USD226m. The other two products are the Market Vectors Biotech ETF (BBH) with USD102m, and the Market Vectors Retail ETF (RTH) with USD30m.The ETF Market Vectors range has total assets of USD25.1bn.

The SYZ & CO group o 25 June announced the launch of four Swiss-registered investment funds (FCP) with fixed revenue, denominated in Swiss francs and euros. The funds, SYZ AM (CH) Liquidity Management–CHF, SYZ AM (CH) Liquidity Management–EUR, SYZ AM (CH) Track–CHF Bonds et SYZ AM (CH) Track–Swiss Government Bonds, managed by SYZ Asset Management, have already been in existence for several years, but they had previously been reserved for institutional investors. Due to their good performance, the funds have been made available to retail investors, in order to meet rising demand on the part of investors for fixed revenue investments in Swiss francs. They have total assets under management of CHF3.5bn. Administrative information Syz AM (CH) Track – CHF Bonds CH0020950405 Syz AM (CH) Track – Government Bonds CH0016216753 Syz AM (CH) Liquidity Management – CHF CH0025074391 Syz AM (CH) Liquidity Management – EUR CH0123544360