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04/06/2012

Mirabaud moves into larger offices in Zurich

The Geneva private bank Mirabaud (CHF24bn in assets) will be taking over the 1,500 square metre offices of Arab Bank (Switzerland) in Zurich. The firm had previously had two locations to house its 20 employees in the Swiss financial capital, according to reports in finews.ch. Lionel Aeschlimann, partner and director of the asset management operation, says that the move corresponds to a desire to develop the group’s presence in Zurich, and that Mirabaud is currently in a period of recruiting additional wealth managers.Mirabaud will also be replacing the director of its Zurich branch, after the departure of Biagio Zoccolillo at the end of March. Steve Bourquin, deputy director of Mirabaud in Basel, is serving in the role for the interim.
04/06/2012

Barclays Bank (Switzerland) opens an office in Zurich

Barclays Bank (Switzerland) is planning to develop its wealth management activities in Switzerland. With this in mind, the British group has opened a branch office in Zurich, from which it will now handle wealth management for local and international clients. The bank has chosen to emphasize Eastern Europe (Russia and the countries of the CIS). The Barclays investment bank, which has been present in Zurich since 2001, will work in close collaboration with the wealth management team, it announced in a statement released in Geneva. Martina Bigliardi Moehr will lead the Zurich offices of Barclays Bank (Switzerland). She had previously been head of wealth management activities for Russia, central and eastern Europe and Israel at Clariden Leu, the former private bank of Credit Suisse. The branch office already has seven employees, and is planning to recruit up to 30 people in the next 12 months. Assets under management are estimated at CHF18bn (in and out Switzerland).
04/06/2012

UBS wealth management loses a regional head

Thomas Egger, who had previously been head of UBS Wealth Management for the Iberias, has left the business to join the team at the new family office Parkview, Finews reports. He will be based in Zurich.
04/06/2012

SIX Swiss Exchange introduces new indices

SIX Swiss Exchange on 4 June announced the forthcoming introduction of SMI Risk Control indices, reflecting a mortage portfolio which aims to diversify risks inherent in SMI assets. The portfolio includes an investment in SMI and an investment in the money markets at overnight rates. Asset allocation for the new indices is controlled daily to maintain the desired risk level. With the new SMI Risk Control indices, participants in the market can have access to underlying SMI assets. Dynamic allocation to high-risk investments in SMI and investment in the money markets takes into account the various risk profiles of investors.
04/06/2012

Departure from Pictet

Gianluca Oderda, who had been manager of the Pictet Absolute Return Global Diversified fund, has left Pictet, according to reports in Citywire Global. He is replaced by Carlos Ontaneda, who was appointed last year ahead of the departure of Oderda.
04/06/2012

30 layoffs at UBP

Union Bancaire Privée (UBP) has laid off 30 personnel. The Geneva bank had already parted with 45 employees between September and December 2011. “In the context of profound changes in the entire banking industry, particularly related to ongoing regulatory changes, we are condinuing to adapt our personnel to the activities at our bank and to keep costs under control,” Jérôme Koechlin, spokesman for UBP, has told the Geneva newspaper La Tribune.
04/06/2012

Pictet Wealth recruits a banker from UBS Wealth

Juan Ignacío Romeu, executive director of UBS Wealth Management in Spain, where he spent eight years, has been recruited as a senior private banker at Pictet Wealth Management in Madrid, Funds People reports. Luis Sánchez de Lamadrid, CEO of the private bank in Spain, says that Pictet ambitions to become one of the largest actors in wealth management in the retail client segment in Spain in the next five years, with EUR5m to EUR10m in assets. The team currently dedicated to this segment includes 18 people.
04/06/2012

Deutsche Bank creates an Asset & Wealth Management division

The board at Deutsche Bank provided some details of its organisation at its meeting on 1 June. The bank has decided to create a new division, Asset & Wealth Management (AWM), which will include Asset Management and Wealth Management activities, and will be led by Anshu Jain, co-chairman of the board and of the Group Executive Committee. The new division will be on a par with the other major units, Corporate Banking & Securities (CB&S), Global Transaction Banking (GTB), and Private & Business Clients (PBC).
04/06/2012

Another real estate asset management merger in Italy

Two Italian real estate asset management firms may soon be merging. Beni Stabiliti Gestioni Sgr, an asset management firm controlled by the Leonardo Del Vecchio group, and Ream SGR, a firm owned by the Fondazione di Torino, Asi and Alessandria, are said to be in talks over a potential merger, according to reports in Il Sole – 24 Ore. The firms together manage about EUR3bn.
04/06/2012

Zombie funds penalise investors

Of 10,000 private equity funds raised in the past decade, at least 200 are so-called ‘zombie’ funds, or dead funds which tie up investors’ money and continue to charge them fees, the Wall Street Journal reports. These represent about USD100bn in an industrity with a total of USD1.5trn, according to TorreyCove Capital Partners. It is complicated for investors to get out of these funds, the newspaper observes, or doing so is costly for them. The WSJ cites the example of the Illinois pension fund, which paid USD580,000 in management fees to various asset management firms for zombie funds in 2010.The Securities and Exchange Commission is delving into such issues as part of a broad look at private-equity funds, adds the newspaper.
04/06/2012

AlphaClone launches an ETF which invests like a hedge fund

On 31 May, AlphaClone, with Exchange Traded Concepts (ETC), launched the AlphaClone Alternative Alpha ETF (acronym ALFA) on the NYSE. The fund invests in US equities confirmed to be held by hedge fund managers. The objective is to capture alpha from the long positions of these asset managers, while protecting the portfolio against protracted downturns on the market via a dynamic hedging mechanism.The fund is derived from the hedge fund replication methodology developed by AlphaClone and its founder, Mazin Jadallah, on the basis of the AlphaClone Hedge Fund Long/Short Index, a passive, risk-managed index. It is the first ETF born of AlphaClone’s partnership with the options exchange International Securities Exchange (ISE).Unlike replications of the beta of hedge funds, the AlphaClone index directly selects the long positions of the fund on the basis of public notifications by hedge funds, using the Clone Score AlphaClone rankings system.ETC is the investment adviser for ALFA, while Knight Clearing Services is the lead market maker.
04/06/2012

Allianz GI liquidates a real estate fund

Following the announcement that subscriptions and redemptions to the real estate fund of funds Allianz Flexi Immo have been frozen (see Newsmanagers of 18 April), Allianz Global Investors (AGI) has announced that the real estate fund of funds Premium Management Immobilien-Anlagen, or PMIA (DE000A0ND6C8) has been liquidated as of 31 May 2012, as scheduled in August 2011.Assets in the product (EUR592.44m as of 30 May), whose redemption had been suspended since 27 September 2010, will now be taken over by Commerzbank, the depository bank. The funds had been launched in May 2008 for customers of Commerzbank.
04/06/2012

Revision of IRP directive postponed by six months

The European Commission will this year not present its revision of the integrated retirement plan (IRP) directive.“Due to the complexity and size of the project, and particularly of very high quality quantitative impact studies, I have decided to take a few more months to finalise the revision. We are thus planning to present the revised directive by summer 2013, rather than at the end of 2012,” The European commissioner in chage of the internal market and services, Michel Barnier, announced on 1 June in Amsterdam.The European Commissioner also pointed out that not all the rules included in Solvency II will be applied to professional retirement institutions. “However, European regulations applicable to insurance businesses are important for pension funds, since there is a legal link between the two,” Barnier points out. The pension fund directive, which dates from 2003, currently refers to insurance regulations in force at that time, namely Solvency I.In this environment, how can pension funds be made to benefit to the same extent as insurers from more effective regulations, better adapted to the challenges of today? “I think it is important to maintain competitive equality betweeb insurance companies and pension funds, when they provide similar and interchangeable products. I would not like to penalise either one or the other,” says Barnier.Hence the decision not to rush things and to continue to work in close collaboration with the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) and all participants to ensure “a good balance in the final text.”
04/06/2012

Paris souhaite des recapitalisations via le MES

Le ministre français de l’Economie et des Finances, Pierre Moscovici, a jugé dimanche que la recapitalisation des banques en Europe devrait s’opérer via le Mécanisme européen de stabilité (MES) plutôt que de passer par les Etats. «Dès lors que ce mécanisme serait en place, on y verrait plus clair et la situation serait aussi plus détendue pour un certain nombre de banques, y compris espagnoles», a-t-il estimé.
04/06/2012

L'Etat doit réaliser 5 milliards d'euros d'économies par an

L’Etat français doit réaliser cinq milliards d'économies par an afin de ramener les finances publiques à l'équilibre d’ici à 2016, selon un rapport de l’Inspection générale des finances dévoilé par Les Echos. Ce rapport, commandé par l’ex-Premier ministre François Fillon, préconise notamment une baisse des effectifs de l’Etat et de ses opérateurs et le gel des salaires et des retraites.
04/06/2012

Chypre se prépare à demander un soutien européen

Selon des déclarations faites par le gouverneur de la banque centrale chypriote au Financial Times, le pays pourrait demander une aide internationale alors qu’il doit recapitaliser d’ici la fin du mois, à hauteur de 1,8 milliard d’euros, la deuxième banque domestique Cyprus Popular Bank. «Il est difficile de voir d’où cette recapitalisation va venir, si ce n’est de l’Europe», a renchéri Michalis Sarris, le président de l'établissement.
04/06/2012

Londres porte en justice l’interdiction des ventes à découvert

La Grande-Bretagne a ouvert une procédure devant la Cour de Justice de l’Union européenne (CJUE) pour contester la compétence, donnée aux nouveaux régulateurs financiers européens, d’interdire les ventes à découvert contre la volonté britannique. Les ventes à découvert permettent de vendre un titre sans le détenir dans l’espoir de l’acheter à un prix plus bas à l’avenir afin de réaliser un bénéfice.
04/06/2012

Le « oui » au Pacte budgétaire l'emporte en Irlande

Les électeurs irlandais ont ratifié le Pacte budgétaire européen à une large majorité de 60% des votants lors du référendum de jeudi. L’Irlande était le seul des 25 Etats membres de l’Union européenne signataires du traité à avoir opté pour une ratification par référendum. Le pacte budgétaire vise à instaurer une plus grande discipline en matière de finances publiques.
04/06/2012

Nouveau recul du PMI officiel des services en Chine

L’activité du secteur tertiaire en Chine a ralenti en mai pour le deuxième mois d’affilée, montre l’indice PMI non-manufacturier, qui a reculé à 55,2 contre 56,1 en avril et 58,0 en mars. Cet indice officiel, calculé par la Fédération chinoise de la logistique et des achats, fournit un aperçu de l’activité dans le secteur tertiaire, qui représente moins de 45% de l'économie du pays.
04/06/2012

L’internationalisation du yuan dépendra des marchés

L’internationalisation de la devise chinoise dépendra d’une «acceptation globale» de la part des investisseurs internationaux ainsi que du développement des marchés financiers en Chine, a indiqué Zhou Xiaochuan, le gouverneur de la Banque Populaire de Chine (PBOC) dans un entretien au China Business News. Zhou Xiaochuan a par ailleurs réitéré son soutien financier à la zone euro, tout en indiquant que les investisseurs chinois dans la zone pourraient subir de fortes pertes.
04/06/2012

La Chine pourrait fortement réduire le prix du fuel

Les prix du diesel et du gasoil en Chine pourraient être réduits d’environ 700 yuans (88,6 euros) par tonne dès le 8 juin prochain, ce qui correspondrait à la plus importante baisse depuis l’introduction de ce système de prix par le gouvernement en 2008, selon le Shanghai Securities News qui se réfère au site spécialisé Chem99.com.
04/06/2012

Les créations d'emploi s'effondrent aux Etats-Unis

Le marché américain du travail a créé nettement moins d’emplois que prévu au mois de mai et le taux de chômage est reparti à la hausse, a annoncé vendredi le département du Travail, confirmant le ralentissement de l'économie américaine. L'économie américaine n’a créé que 69.000 emplois non agricoles le mois dernier et le taux de chômage a progressé à 8,2% (contre 8,1% en avril), le niveau qui était le sien au mois de mars.
04/06/2012

George Soros donne trois mois à l'Allemagne

L’Allemagne et sa banque centrale ont trois mois pour sortir la zone euro de la crise, après quoi il sera trop tard, prévient le milliardaire américain George Soros. S’exprimant samedi lors d’une conférence en Italie, George Soros a souligné que la crise de l’euro menaçait de détruire l’Union européenne et de la plonger dans une «décennie perdue» comme celle traversée par l’Amérique latine dans les années 1980.
Markit 2
04/06/2012

Le moral des cadres remonte lentement la pente

Selon le baromètre de Viavoce préparé pour le journal, le moral des cadres, tout en restant négatif à -39 points, a gagné deux points au mois de mai. 63% d’entre eux estiment par ailleurs que le chômage va augmenter dans les prochains mois, contre 73% un mois plus tôt et 87% en novembre dernier.
04/06/2012

Le Royaume-Uni est également exposé à la Grèce

Le Royaume-Uni pourrait être mis à contribution pour garantir jusqu’à 6 milliards d’euros dans le cas d’un sauvetage de la Grèce si le pays était amenés à quitter la zone euro, selon le quotidien qui cite une étude du «think-thank», Open Europe. Dans un tel scénario, David Cameron pourrait être amené à faire des concessions telles que réaliser un référendum sur l’adhésion de la Grande-Bretagne à l’euro, selon l'étude.

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