The investment firm PAI Partners, hit by a governance conflict in 2009 which led to the departure of its two directors and the division of its last fund into two smaller units, is now making a recovery and is planning to raise a sixth fund in first half with EUR3bn in assets, Les Echos reports. “We may raise a new fund in spring. Our ambition is to rise a vehicle equivalent to the previous one, with about EUR3bn, We are certain that investor appetite is there. Unlike in 2009, US and Asian investors, who are at major lows in their savings, are not seeing a crisis. They are still allocating a significant portion of their assets to this asset class,” PAI chairman and CEO Lionel Zinsou tells Les Echos.

The former Aegon AM, Kames Capital, has announced three recruitments for its bond management team. Fundweb reports that these are Debbie King (former financial analyst at Intergen), Garvin People (formerly of PwC) and Paul Dilworth, who joins from the performance measurement team at Kames.

Schroders has appointmented Ian Maybury who will take up the newly created role of head of solutions management in the Multi-Asset and Portfolio Solutions Group in April 2012. This team is part of the Schroders GBP32.9 billion Multi-Asset and Portfolio Solutions business lead by Nico Marais. Prior to joining Schroders, Ian Maybury worked at Redington where he was co-head of Asset Liability Management & Investment Strategy.

The XTF segment of the Xetra electronic trading platform on 9 January added seven new ETFs from db X-trackers II (Deutsche Bank group), bringing the number of ETFs listed in Frankfurt to 907.The new products include four funds based on credit derivatives, and three ETFs based on bond indidces. All of them are Luxembourg-registered funds; management commissions range from 0.15% to 0.34%. A list of the funds is attached.

Thorsten Michalik, director of ETF activities at Deutsche Bank (db x-trackers), claims that the European market may expand by 15-20% this year, or EUR25-30bn, if the environment remains unchanged, Handelsblatt reports. In order to profit from this development, Michalik is planning to launch 30 new ETF funds. In January, 7 products have already been listed in Germany investing in government bonds and credit derivatives, while 6 others will be listed in Hon Kong. The other ETFs will be country funds, focused on emerging countries, and products based on equally-weighted equity indices of the major markets.In 2011, the European ETF market contracted by 1% to EUR229.5bn. But this year, there will be no further regulatory obstacles, as ESMA will this month publish new rules for listed tracker funds and other funds. The rules will concern assets that may be included in the portfolios, and will allow retail investors to better understand products.

The Living Planet Fund Management Company, an affiliate of WWF International, and the European broker Cheuvreux on 11 January announced the annual revision of the Living Planet Green Tech Europe Index, a green market index launched jointly by them. Four companies are being removed from the index: Wavin NV, Roth & Rau Ag, Q-Celles and Solar Millennium, while five companies are joining the index: Derichebourg (about 2%), Enel Green Power SpA (3.1%), Pfeiffer Vacuum Tech (0.8%), Spirax-Sarco Engineering (3.1%) and Umicore SA (1.1%). The index, whose value is calculated and published in real time by Standard & Poor’s, includes 50 publicly-traded European companies. The companies deliver sustainable solutions that respond to environmental challenges the planet is facing currently. The index includes several sectors of green tech, including energy efficiency, water management, renewable energies, alternative energies and transport, ecological products and services, biomass, and waste management.

The executive board at the Oddo Group on 11 January announced the arrival of Nicolas Chaput as CEO of Oddo Asset Management. He becomes a member of the executive board at the Oddo Group. He will begin in the new role on 1 February 2012. Chaput succeeds Guido Mundt, who successfully contributed to the merger between Oddo & Cie and the Banque d’Orsay. Mundt will continue to oversee searches for new partnerships, with a view to accentuate the presence of the group in the German-speaking countries. Since November 2008, Chaput has been head of fixed income management at BNP Paribas Asset Management. Chaput supervised 8 management centres (Paris, Milan, Amsterdam, London, Now York, Tokyo, Singapore, and Kuala Lumpur), where a total of 120 professionals manage EUR228bn in assets (as of the end of June 2010).

Regions Financial Corp is selling its regional brokerage firm Morgan Keegan to Raymond James Financial for USD930m, while Morgan Keegan will pay a one-time dividend of USD250m to Regions before the transaction is completed, the Wall Street Journal reports.Regions also agreed to indemnify Raymond James for any litigation related to Morgan Keegan, which has already paid the SEC USD200m to settle a civil suit over a fraud case.With Morgan Keegan, Raymond James will have staff of over 6,000 financial advisers.

According to a SEC filing from Carlyle Group, the three founders of the private equity group, David Rubenstein, William Conway and Daniel D’Aniello have each earned salary of USD275,000, a bonus of USD3.5m and a USd134m stake in the profits earned by the firm on its investments, the Wall Street Journal reports.However, the founders are continuing to invest money into their funds. In 2010, Conway invested USD164m, D’Aniello placed USD98m, and Rubinstein reinvested USD97m. They have collectively pledged to invest a further USD490.7m in Carlyle funds.

“The future development of La Financière Responsable will be partnerships,” says Olivier Johanet, president and largest shareholder in the asset management firm dedicated to socially responsible investment, in an interview with Newsmanagers. The director sees three types of possible collaboration. Firstly, sales agreements, such as the one LFR signed a year ago with the Banque Martin Maurel, by which the latter, which has no SRI funds in its range, offers clients products from the asset management boutique. This search for sales partnerships would not be limied to France, as Johanet would like to develop the structure in other countries, including Germany, Scandinavia and the Latin countries, and is seeking partnerships with third-party marketing firms to this end. The second area fo growth is expertise partnerships. LFR has already signed one such partnership with Diamant Bleu Gestion, which resulted in the creation of a flexible diversifeid SRI fund to which each firm contributed its expertise: flexible management by Diamant Bleu and socially responsible investment by LFR. Johanet also has nothing against an investment by another company. Last year, he announced that he was seeking a partner, though none have come forward to date. The objective is to increase assets, which would allow the firm to attract more institutional investors. Johanet regrets that many of them are hesitant to invest in funds which are too small. At LFR, none of the three funds ever reached over EUR25m. In 2011, LFR has seen a decline in its assets, from EUR51m to EUR46m (in the three funds), largely due to declining markets. However, Johanet says that he has not yet seen redemptions, and even some subscriptions to the solidaristic fund, which has increased from EUR1.5m in assets to EUR3m. The other good news for the year is that LFR has been qualified as a young enterprising firm, for its work in the area of SRI, and this means a tax credit which will be used to support R&D.

Partners Group as of the end of 2011 had assets under management of EUR24.8bn, compared with EUR22.8bn at the end of first half. For the year 2011 as a whole, net inflows have totalled EUR4.2bn, after EUR2.1bn as of the end of June, the Swiss wealth management firm reports in a statement published on 12 January. Of total assets of EUR24.8bn, about EUR17.7bn in assets under management are in the Private Equity division, EUR2bn are in the Private Debt unit, EUR3.3bn in the Private Real Estate unit, and EUR1.2bn in Private Infrastructure. In the current fiscal year, the firm is predicting inflows of EUR4bn to EUR5bn, despite the fact that the economic situation appears less good this year than last, a statement says. Demand from North America and Asia remains strong, particularly from pension and sovereign funds, Partners Group states.

PwC is predicting that European markets will see a regain in the number of initial public offerings, but that the rise may not come until third quarter of the year, according to the most recent IPO Watch Europe study from PwC. There are also a large number of companies prepared to seize the opportunity if the right market conditions present themselves. Philippe Kubisa, partner in the capital markets department at PwC in France, says: “Companies planning an initial public offering in 2012 need to prepare and position themselves so that they can be in a position to seize the opportunity as soon as it presents itself. The exact date on which the markets will pick up again remains uncertain. Companies need to ensure that they’ve got the bases in place well ahead of time in order to be able to seize key opportunities for initial offerings in 2012.” The European IPO market in 2011, overall, finished on a hard fourth quarter. In fourth quarter 2011, 78 initial offerings raised only EUR866m, down 81% in value compared with third quarter 2011, and down 83% year on year. Despite a weak second half in 2011, European initial offerings for the year mobilised EUR26.5bn, an amount comparable to 2010. The number of initial offerings increased 13%, to 430. London generated EUR14.6bn, more than half of funds raised, though it accounted for only one quarter of European operations. The 15 largest operations raised EUR20bn, 75% of the total value in European initial offerings in 2011. These include offerings from Glencore, Vallares, and Justice in London, and Bankia et Dia in Spain, which alone represented EUR14.6bn. Kong Kong saw a 43% decline in funds raised, although in the course of the year it managed to attract several international groups in the luxury sector, such as Prada. In the United States, a return to a high number of large operations in first half 2011 meant a total of USD25.6bn were raised in 2011, down 13.4% compared with 2010, largely thanks to the colossal IPO of General Motors.

The most recent statistics published in the Towers Watson quarterly observer of the performance of M&A operations have shown that in 2011, on average, buyers continued to outperform the MSCI Global index, and posted adjusted returns 2.9 basis points above those of the index for the year under review. Buyers continued to earn outperformance for their share prices compared with their respective indices, despite unfavourable market conditions and a steeply reduced level of confidence in businesses. The most recent edition of the study by Towers Watson on the basis of a quarterly analysis by the Cass Business School, also finds that buyers in the Asia-Pacific region who completed deals in 2011 generated more shareholder value, outperforming their regional index by 6.7 basis points, compared with outperformance of only 4.8 basis points for European buyers compared with their respective indices. The North American buyers who finalised deals in 2011 show a less significant outperformance, with returns of over 1.4 basis points compared with their regional index. Taking into account the previous 16 quarters of the study, the figures also show a marked difference between regions in terms of the time taked to execute transactions. On average, it took buyers in the Asia-Pacific region 108 days to complete a transaction, compared with barely 57 days for their North American counterparts, nearly half. The time taken for European buyers to execute transactions was about 89 days.

AllianceBernstein on 11 January announced the launch of the Short Duration High Yield Portfolio (LU0654559516), a fund which invests in high yield securities whose average maturity is under four years, in Europe. In a context which has recently been dominated by a contraction in spreads and an increase in volatility, the new Luxembourg-registered fund will aim for returns on high yield assets which have a more limited risk profile. The portfolio prefers corporate bonds of a rating below investment grade, as well as government and quasi-government bonds from developed and emerging markets. The strategies used to reduce volatility include a preference for short-term bonds, high-quality issuers within the high yield issue universe (excluding issuers rated CCC or lower), and the use of hedging techniques including particular protection against issuers taken singularly, and options on bond indices or interest rates. Research by AllianceBernstein finds that by shortening the duration of bond positions, investors lose relatively little performance over a complete market cycle, but gain some stability in times of crisis. The fund is managed by a team with average experience in the high yield sector of 14 years, and is benchmarked against the Barclays Capital Global High Yield Corporate 1-5 Years.

The CNMV has issued a sales license for Spain to four absolute return funds from the Absolute Insight range from Insight Investment, an affiliate of BNY Mellon Asset Management, Funds People reports. They are the Absolute Insight Credit Fund, Absolute Insight Currency Fund, Absolute Insight Emerging Market Debt Fund and Absolute Insight UK Equity Market Neutral Fund.

Even before beginning its operations, a joint venture from NewAlpha Asset Management, an incubation structure from Ofi and Woori Absolute Partners, an alternative management affiliate of the South Korean Woori I&S (see Newsmanagers of 16 June 2011) has already riased USD50m, Thierry Callault, deputy CEO of Ofi AM, announced at the French asset management firm’s annual conference.The joint venture will be licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). The seeding platform will invest in young and promising alternative management firms, relying on the expertise of Ofi and the local connections of Woori.

The Swiss federal council is looking to fill gaps in Swiss legislation in the area of collective investments. After consulting with the circles concerned, the council announced on 11 January that it has instructed the Federal finance department (DFF) to compose a bill by early March for a revised law on collective investments (LPCC). Most participants in the consultation wre favourable to the objectives and major outlines of the legislation proposed by the Federal countil, and the decision to treat the need for legislation as urgent, with an eye to adapting to revised regulations in the European Union. Due to divergent interests that became apparent, some terms in the law were the subject of sometimes contradictory responses. Participants were critical of an extension of the application of the LPCC law to all collective investment managers. They also disapproved of the new expression “distribution,” which was considered too broad, the limitation of legal forms considered to be collective investment managers, the catalogue of contributions to be paid by these, and toughened requirements for representatives of foreign collective investment managers. The Federal council has taken into consideration the concerns expressed by the participants at the consultation, while also respecting the essential objectives of the partial revision, namely, to strengthen protection of investors and competitiveness, while aligning national regulations with international standards.

Next week, Fidelity, AllianceBernstein and TIAA-CREF will express concerns at a US Congressional hearing about the Volcker rule, the Financial Times reports. In a letter, AllianceBernstein has already warned against the devastating effect the rule would have on liquidity in the fixed income market. Japanese and Canadian regulators have also warned the US government that the rule could penalise global markets.

The German BVI association of asset management firms is opposed to subjecting subscriptions to investment funds to a potential tax on financial transactions. If those who caused the financial crisis are to be made to contribute appropriately to paying for the damage it caused, German funds were not the cause of the crisis, and they did not seek government aid. Such a tax would weigh on businesses and investors based in Germany and citizens saving for the long term most of all, as they would be penalised by a demographic structure which requires them to make individual retirement savings, says Thomas Richter, CEO of the BVI.Richter also claims that such a tax would cause increased distortion to competitiveness, as it would apply to shares in money market and real estate funds, for example, but not to savings accounts and real estate transactions.Ultimately, BVI claims, the only visible effect of the tax would be an increase in the price of financial services to the end client.

The Wall Street Journal reports that BATS Global Markets, which accounts for 115 of daily trading volume on US equities, has convinced BlackRock to launch eight new ETFs on its platform. The funds on 24 January will become the first products to receive a primary listing on BATS. A statement will be released on Thursday about these listings.

OFP Hydralis est chargé de gérer les pensions légales des agents statutaires de Vivaqua. L’allocation des 400 millions d’euros d’actifs du régime est la suivante: 60.6% d’obligations, 27.6% d’actions et 11.8% d’immobilier. Les actifs sont gérés séparément par un ou plusieurs asset managers désignés dans le cadre d’une procédure de mise en concurrence et sont répartis comme suit: Obligations d’Etat zone Europe: BNP Paribas Investment Partners Obligations Corporate EMU: Allianz Global Investors Actions zone Europe de petite et moyenne capitalisation, actions EMU de grande capitalisation, actions mondiales hors EMU: Dexia Asset Management et Petercam Immobilier zone euro: Axa Investment Management Hydralis OFP a démarré une étude actuarielle à la fin de l’année 2011, qui devrait déboucher sur une revue stratégique des investissements en 2012.

La Maif a réduit de moitié en 2011 son exposition aux obligations des pays dits « PIIGS », Portugal, Italie, Irlande, Grèce, Espagne. « Nous avons une gestion financière qui se veut adossée et prudente, comme la majorité des assureurs, explique Benoit Jullien, directeur des placements et des investissements. Nous avons donc privilégié les placements obligataires bien notés à taux fixe et indexés sur l’inflation. » Mais la détérioration rapide de la qualité de crédit des émetteurs des pays périphériques a poussé l’assureur à opérer des ajustements en 2011: les obligations des pays périphériques représentaient initialement 11% des placements réglementés. « Nous avons réduit de moitié cette exposition. Parallèlement, la part totale d’obligations a légèrement augmenté, avec des investissements sur des titres de maturité plus longue, et plus récemment sur des obligations indexées sur l’inflation et des obligations convertibles.» « Les obligations françaises nous placent face à un dilemme, confirme Benoit Jullien de la Maif. L’exclusion des émetteurs des pays périphériques et de certains émetteurs du secteur financier nous amène à être particulièrement concentrés sur certains émetteurs qui pourraient devenir de « faux amis ». Ainsi, les OAT représentent entre 40 et 55% des placements obligataires de la Maif, qui possède également des obligations d’entreprises françaises. « Imaginez que l’Etat français soit dégradé dans quelques jours, la moitié de notre portefeuille sera dégradé avec lui. » La Maif croit au scénario de hausse des prix et a augmenté récemment sa part d’obligations indexées sur l’inflation. Mais Benoit Jullien impose une limite : « L’inflation n’est pas forcément une garantie que l'émetteur remboursera. Il ne faut pas oublier que l’Etat peut être fragilisé par l’inflation et finir par ne plus rembourser sa dette. Donc le pari est le suivant : il faut qu’il y ait de l’inflation, mais pas trop forte, sans quoi l'évolution de la prime de crédit émetteur viendra annihiler le bénéfice de l’indexation à l’inflation. » L’assureur doit donc avoir une gestion beaucoup plus dynamique que par le passé, et s’adapter à la conjoncture.

L'assureur a investi près de 400 millions d'euros en France l'an dernier. Il a anticipé un fléchissement de la concurrence à l'achat cette année

Ils ont représenté 26 % des transactions de bureaux l'an dernier. Mais les difficultés du secteur pourraient entraîner une redistribution des cartes

Le programme de financement de 40 milliards d'euros en 2012 pourra être réalisé jusqu'à 80% à court terme

Pékin a ouvert son marché obligataire, alors que le ralentissement de l’inflation à 4,1% en décembre fait renaître des anticipations de baisse de taux

La filiale de JPMorgan envisage selon le quotidien, qui cite une documentation transmise aux investisseurs, de récolter 3 milliards de dollars pour son second fonds mezzanine, afin de tirer parti de la rareté du financement de la dette. Le fonds devrait investir auprès de sociétés ayant une valeur d’entreprise de 1,5 à 2,0 milliards de dollars.

Près de 80% des 33 secteurs analysés par le Crédit Agricole devraient connaître en 2012 une variation d’activité comprise entre -2% et 2%

Selon une étude commandée par un lobby financier, les coûts liés à la taxe proposée par Bruxelles représenteraient près de deux tiers de ses recettes

La société de gestion entend développer sa plate-forme luxembourgeoise, créée en 2004, pour accroître la transparence requise par ses investisseurs