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01/06/2012

EFAMA publishes its fifth annual atlas of asset management

The European financial and asset management association (EFAMA) on 31 May published the fifth edition of its annual atlas of the asset management sector in Europe (“Fith Annual Review Asset Management in Europe: Facts & Figures”), on the basis of statistics from the end of 2010.In addition to the usual statistics, the document underscores the importance of the sector and its role in the management of long-term savings and in financing the economy. Asset managers as of the end of 2010 controlled 23% of all debt issued in the euro zone, and 31% of corporate equities in the region.Institutional investors remain the largest category of clients for asset management firms, representing 69% of assets under management in Europe, of which 42% are managed for insurers, and 27% for pension funds. Meanwhile, the sector remains concentrated, as the three largest countries by asset volume – the United Kingdom, France and Germany – account for 65% of all assets under management in Europe.
01/06/2012

Inflows continue for Invesco in France

“Our assets in Paris remain stable at over USD2bn, as at the end of 2011, but since then we have taken on a gross total of USD300bn and our subscriptions are positive overall,” Nicolas Bouët, deputy CEO for development at Invesco in Paris, explained on Thursday. Demand is coming mostly from institutional investors, as well as, to a lesser extent, from private banks and multi-managers.The Euro Corporate Bond fund was particularly popular with clients seeking income, as was the Balanced Risk Allocation fund for decorrelation and diversification.In terms of asset allocation, Barnard Aybran, deputy CEO for multi-management, reports that the wealth management time portfolio currently includes about 25% “safe heaven government bonds (US Treasuries, gilts and bunds), 40% investment grade corporate bonds and emerging market debt in local currencies, 15% equities, only 2.5% of them European (with the rest divided between Asia and US tech stocks), and the remainder, equivalent to about 20%, in cash and money market products.”
01/06/2012

Promotion for Thomas Idzorek at Morningstar

Thomas Idzorek, who is already CIO of Morningstar Investment Management, has been promoted to chairman of the Investment Management division of Morningstar, whose assets under management and advising total about USD190bn. Idzorek replaces Peng Chen, who leaves Morningstar at the end of June to return to Asia. The division in includes advised and managed assets, retirement solutions and management of investments in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.Idzorek joined Morningstar six years ago, when the group acquired Ibbotson Associates.
01/06/2012

BNP Paribas increases staff in private management

BNP Paribas Private Bank yesterday inaugurated its fourth regional wealth management office, in Toulouse, following offices in Bordeaux, Lille and Marseilles, Les Echos reports. Offices will open in Lyon in September and Rennes by the end of the year to complement these offices, dedicated to clients with assets of over EUR5m. A private bank has also been founded in Poland.
01/06/2012

Hedge funds slash budget for equity research

According to a survey by Greenwich Associates, institutional investors have reduced their spending in the twelve months to the end of March on research such as analysts notes and trading ideas by 9%, to USD6.2bn, the Financial Times reports.Hedge funds have been particularly severe with their reductions, with research spending as a proportion of brokerage commission budgets down 20%.
01/06/2012

Axa IM has produced and distributed 4,500 KIIDs

Axa IM has announced that it has finalised the production and distribution of 4,500 key investor information documents (KIIDs). This figure includes all the UCITS funds in the Axa IM Luxembourg ranges, notably AXA World Funds (AXA WF) and AXA IM Fixed Income Investment Strategies (FIIS), in addition to most of the funds covered by French law. The KIIDs for Axa IM’s UK and Irish ranges will be published in June 2012. “Axa IM is therefore on track to meet the 1 July 2012 deadline for the implementation of the KIID directive, including those for non-coordinated funds for which the regulator expects compliance by 1 July 2013,” a statement says. Axa IM rolled out its KIID compliance project in October 2010
01/06/2012

Axa betting on a rebound for its asset management activities

After net redemptions of EUR5.4bn in first quarter, asset management at Axa will win back some strenght in the next few months. After EUR2.7bn in capital outflows as of the end of March, “Axa Investment managers will have positive inflows in first half,” Denis Duverne, deputy CEO for the French group, has told Agefi. AllianceBernstein (EUR2.7bn in outflows at the beginning of this year) is expecting to return to positive net inflows in third quarter.
01/06/2012

Appointment at Credit Suisse Banque Privée

Britta Häberling, who had previously been managing director and head of investment solutions at Clariden Leu, will no 1 June begin as head of ultra-high net worth individuals in the Zurich region at the Credit Suisse private bank, according to reports in Finews. Initially, Mike Baur had agreed to take the position, before deciding to leave the company.
01/06/2012

UBS receives a banking license in China

The Chinese banking sector regulatory commission (CBRC) has authorised UBS to transform its Beijing office into a Chinese-registered bank under the name UBS (China) Ltd. The new entity, which is 100% controlled by the Swiss group, will begin its activities in third quarter, Z-Ben Advisors reports. UBS has now launched an “aggressive” campaign to promote its wealth management activities, which will be a strategic area in China, alongside asset management and investment banking.
01/06/2012

JPMorgan AM scales up presence in Brazil

Richard Titherington, CIO for emerging market equities at JPMorgan Asset Management in London, on Thursday announced at a presentation in Paris that the US asset management firm is planning to scale up its presence in Brazil, where it already has a small affiliate (USD50m) specialised in local bonds. The firm is now planning to build its holdings in Brazilian equities, which currently represent 15.2% of the portfolio of the Emerging Market Opportunities fund, compared with 14% in the MSCI Emerging Markets TR index. The product currently has USD437m in assets, in 61 holdings, and has seen inflows of about USD150m since the beginning of this year.
01/06/2012

Berkshire Hathaway enters DJ Global Titans 50 Index

The BASF SE, Berkshire Hathaway, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, MacDonald’s and Qualcomm companies have joined the Dow Jones Global Titans 50 index, the index provider Dow Jones Indexes has announced. However, the five companies leaving the index include the German firm Allianz and the French BNP Paribas. The other three outgoing companies are E.ON, Hewlett-Packard and Petroleo.
01/06/2012

Union Investment harshly critical of Deutsche Bank

At the Deutsche Bank AGM on Thursday, Ingo Speich, a portfolio manager at Union Investment, announced that he would be voting agains the discharge to Clemens Börsig, chairman of the supervisory board at Deutsche Bank, in which the asset management firm for the German co-operative banks is one of the largest shareholders, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. He accuses Börsig of having poorly managed the succession of Josef Ackermann as chairman at the bank, and of appointing a chief risk officer who was rejected by BaFin.Union has also been critical of a lack of transparency in acquisitions by Deutsche Bank (Noris and Berliner Bank), and of making unfortunate investments in the United States, as Scudder was absorbed by DWS and must now be resold along with RREEF and all asset management activities in North America.According to the Börsen-Zeitung, a motion to discharge the supervisory board received only 77.7% of votes in favour.
01/06/2012

Pimco launches a substitute for money markets with higher yields

With the Pimco Short Asset Investment Fund (acronym PAIDX), Pimco (Allianz group) on Wednesday launched a fund which uses a short-term strategy aiming to function as a substitute for money market products, offering higher returns with lower risk. The portfolio, managed by Jerome Schneider, will invest at least 65% of its assets in fixed income products, with a duration not to exceed one and a half years. The fund may use derivatives without restriction.Management commission ranges from 0.24% for institutional shares to 0.59% for D-class shares on sale from distributors.
01/06/2012

DWS releases High Income Bond Fund in Spain

On 25 May, DWS Investments (Spain) registered the German-domiciled bond fund DWS High Income Bond Fund (DE0008490913, EUR92.9bn in assets as of 30 May) with the CNMV. The fund invests in investment grade corporate debt from developed and emerging countries.
01/06/2012

Nordea closes funds

Nordea will be restructuring its Swedish “generations” range of funds, which will be reduced from 10 products to four, Privata Affärer reports. Eight funds, with 180,000 savings investors, will be merged in October. The funds affected are those aimed at savers born between 1950 and 1985.
01/06/2012

Global Wealth Report: wealth managers have to be inventive

The 12th issue of the Global Wealth Report from Boston Consulting Group (BCG) has found that the global financial wealth of retail investors in 2011 increased by only 1.9%, to USD122,800, after increases of 6.8% in 2010 and 9.6% in 2009. BCG suggest that wealth managers have to proactively find new ways to combat adverse trends if they want to improve their performance. Globally, the asset bases of 130 institutions (private banks or wealth management units of large universal banking groups) analysed by BCG remained flat in 2011, compared with a gain of 11% in 2010. The lack of growth was mainly attributable to the deterioration in market values, which was not offset by net new inflows.“But wealth managers will still need to continue their cost-cutting and pricing initiatives, refocus on client discovery, master the ever-shifting regulatory environment, bolster risk management, and find ways to use alternative business models to their advantage», the report says.The report finds that wealth managers will need to continue to reduce their costs and the price of their services, refocus on the identification of new clients, master a perpetually changing regulatory environment, build risk management, and find means to use different business models to their advantage.
01/06/2012

Go-ahead for two hydroelectric funds from DWS

According to reports in Fondsprofessionell, DWS has reached the minimal subscription level required for institutional (beta) and retail (alpha) share classes in its hydroelectric fund, DWS Access Wasserkraft (see Newsmanagers of 3 November 2011 and 10 April 2012). The Deutsche Bank affiliate is reported to have seen inflows of EUR30m in investment pledges for beta shares, and over EUR5m for alpha shares. The closure of subscriptions, which has already been postponed twice, is now set for 28 June.
01/06/2012

European Commission rejects restructuring plan at Dexia

The European Commission has refused to approve a resolution plan at the banking group Dexia, which was submitted to it in late March by the Belgian, French and Luxembourg governments, Les Echos reports. Unlike its precedents at WestLB and Anglo Irish Bank, the plan was too eclectic in its mix of restructuring and orderly resolution, the European antitrust authority has found.
01/06/2012

Axa table sur un rebond de son activité en gestion d’actifs

Après une décollecte nette de 5,4 milliards d’euros au premier trimestre, la gestion d’actifs d’Axa devrait retrouver des couleurs dans les prochains mois. Après 2,7 milliards de sorties de capitaux à fin mars, « Axa Investment Managers devrait avoir une collecte positive au premier semestre », a indiqué hier Denis Duverne, directeur général délégué du groupe français. Quant à AllianceBernstein, qui a aussi enregistré 2,7 milliards d’euros de décollecte en début d’année, « il faudra attendre le quatrième trimestre pour voir une collecte nette positive ». Nicolas Moreau, PDG d’Axa France, a dressé un premier bilan de son offre de dépendance individuelle, lancée début janvier. « Nous avons enregistré 6.000 affaires nouvelles, soit notre objectif annuel, a-t-il indiqué. Nous en visons désormais 20.000 pour 2012. » Engagé dans un plan d’économies de 500 millions d’euros d’ici 2015, il a également précisé que le groupe enregistrait 400 départs à la retrait par an et que « seule une personne sur deux serait remplacée ».
01/06/2012

Deutsche Börse s’intéresse à la compensation des dérivés OTC

L’opérateur boursier allemand, via sa filiale Eurex Clearing, va mettre en place une plate-forme de compensation des swaps de taux traités de gré à gré (OTC). Pour cela, le groupe s’associe à plusieurs acteurs bancaires: Barclays, BNP Paribas, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan et Morgan Stanley.
01/06/2012

Lazard veut grandir au Brésil

La banque d’investissement a annoncé le rachat de la totalité de sa coentreprise au Brésil, Signatura Lazard, ainsi que le recrutement d’Henrique Meirelles, président de la Banque centrale du pays de 2003 à 2010. Il prend la fonction de président de Lazard Americas. Basé à Sao Paulo, il sera chargé de conseiller la direction au sujet de projets internationaux majeurs, selon Lazard. La banque précise que les fondateurs de la coentreprise brésilienne en 2004, Marcelo Lyrio et Jean-Pierre Zarouk, continueront de diriger la manœuvre au Brésil. Haut responsable de la banque, Antonio Weiss assure que ces annonces soulignent la confiance portée par Lazard sur les opportunités présentes et futures du Brésil, à ses yeux l’une des économies les plus importantes et les plus dynamiques dans le monde.
01/06/2012

Coup d'arrêt du secteur manufacturier chinois

L’indice PMI officiel d’activité du secteur manufacturier en Chine a chuté pour la première fois en six mois de 2,9 points à 50,4 en mai, contre 52,0 anticipé par le consensus Bloomberg, selon les chiffres publiés ce matin par le bureau des statistiques chinois. L’indice HSBC en mai a été confirmé à 48,4 points, son plus long séjour en zone de contraction depuis août 2008.
01/06/2012

Le Paraguay lance un marché des dérivés de change

Le Paraguay est en phase de lancement de son premier marché à terme sur les changes, et le premier contrat devrait être traité dans les huit prochains mois, selon le quotidien qui cite la chambre de compensation argentine qui a aidé la Bourse du Paraguay dans son projet. Les contrats permettront d’échanger le guarani contre le billet vert.
01/06/2012

JPMorgan dans le viseur de la CFTC

Le régulateur américain des marchés à terme, la Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a envoyé à JPMorgan des demandes de renseignements, passant par la transmission de courriers électroniques et autres documents, en lien avec la perte de trading de plusieurs milliards de dollars dévoilée par la banque américaine. La CFTC s’interroge sur le comportement des traders à l’égard de leurs supérieurs et des contrôleurs internes du risque.
01/06/2012

Les placements privés ont la cote

Sept groupes français ont émis sur le marché américain depuis janvier. Et autant d'émissions pourraient suivre d’ici la fin de l’année, dont Auchan et Air Liquide. La Société Générale et Axa ont signé un accord pour monter un fonds commun spécialisé dans les placements privés.

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