Two hedge funds, Kingate Global Fund and Kingate Euro Fund, have sued Deutsche Bank, accusing it of refusing to honour a commitment to buy up their claims for losses in the Bernard Madoff case for USD1bn, the Wall Street Journal reports. Under the agreement, Deutsche Bank would have been required to but up USD1.6bn in debt for USD1.1bn. But since then, a series of court verdicts has limited the ability of the court-appointed trustee for Madoff to recuperate money for investors.
After recently expressing regret at the unfounded accusations levelled at ETFs, Scott Ebner, global head of product development for SPDR ETF (State Street Global Advisors), has said that he is shocked by the recent discussions taking place about ETFs,, at a round table held in London. “There is inaccurate information [going around] which has obscured the genuinely positive qualities of ETFs and the reasons for their sustained growth rate,” he explained, pointing out that these products are “flexible tools, which bring immediate diversification into market segments which were previously prohibitive or difficult to access.” Separating out the merits of the physical replication method compared with synthetic replication is less important for investors than understanding how and why to use ETFs. Ebner also brushes off the notion that ETFs would have a destabilising effect on the markets. “In reality, there are about 2,000 ETFs on the market, which is not many compared with the number of funds in the Morningstar universe,” he says. In the debate, Justin Urquhart, director of marketing at the firm Seven Investment Management, claimed that the low cost of ETFs are a factor in their popularity. Steven Doran, a fund manager at HSBC Global Asset Management, welcomed the beneficial effects of ETFs on the markets, as they bring liquidity, particularly to sectors such as emerging markets. But the head also militated for increased efforts to educate investors. There is still some work to be done to make retail investors fully understand synthetic ETFs.
L’Union Nationale Mutualiste Interprofessionnelle (UNMI) a sélectionné en septembre les gérants du portefeuille diversifié action/taux dont l’encours total est de 180 millions d’euros. Epaulée par la société Alpha Institutionnels Conseil, l’UNMI a désigné Fédéris Gestion d’Actifs (FGA), qui était jusqu’alors le gérant principal du mandat et La Banque Postale Asset Management (LBPAM).
Le programme de financement 2012 de la Finanzagentur prévoit 250 milliards d’euros d'émissions de dette, dont 170 milliards à moyen et long terme, hors titres indexés sur l’inflation. Une réduction de près de 10% par rapport aux volumes émis cette année, mais qui pourrait gonfler en cas de recapitalisation publique des banques.
Les dix premiers fonds monétaires américains ont encore réduit leur exposition à la dette des banques européennes en novembre, à 33,4% contre 34,9% fin octobre, selon Fitch. L’agence relève aussi que 27% de l’exposition est désormais constituée de repo, du financement sécurisé par du collatéral, contre 10% fin 2009.
Les autorités chinoises envisageraient, selon le Wall Street Journal, d’introduire un nouveau système identique au fonds de sécurité sociale national qui permettrait aux gouvernements locaux d’investir une partie des fonds dans le marché actions domestique. Les fonds de pension locaux représentent un montant de près de 2.000 milliards de yuans, soit environ 241 milliards d’euros et ont dégagé un rendement de 4,2% en 2010.
Le directeur général de Fortress Investment Group a annoncé son retrait provisoire. Il est remplacé par un cofondateur, Randal Nardone. L’ancien patron de Fannie Mae ne souhaite pas que les «affaires» externes perturbent la marche du gestionnaire américain. Daniel Mudd a été accusé par la SEC d’avoir délibérément sous-estimé l’exposition des agences aux crédits hypothécaires risqués.
L’Autorité des marchés financiers a indiqué que dans le prolongement de la transposition de la directive OPCVM IV, ses instructions relatives à l’agrément et au fonctionnement des OPCVM et OPCI ont été modifiées, prenant désormais en compte l’ensemble des nouveautés introduites en droit français.
Mark Mobius, le président de Franklin Templeton, anticipe dans le quotidien brésilien Valor Economico que la crise de la dette souveraine en zone euro trouvera une issue favorable d’ici la fin du premier semestre de l’année prochaine. «La crise européenne n’est pas aussi profonde que ce que les gens pensent», estime-t-il.
La Banque centrale européenne a alloué mercredi matin 489,2 milliards d’euros aux banques au terme de sa toute première opération de refinancement à trois ans. Un montant dans le haut de la fourchette des estimations, qui oscillaient entre 200 et 500 milliards d’euros. Quelque 523 établissements sont allés demander des fonds au guichet BCE. Le record de 442 milliards d’euros établi lors de l’adjudication à 1 an de juin 2009 a donc été battu, même si 1.123 banques avaient été servies à l'époque. Reste à savoir comment cette manne, qui représente environ 1,5 fois les besoins de financement de l’Espagne et de l’Italie en 2012, sera utilisée.
Les fonds «tout terrain», susceptibles d’investir sur n’importe quelle classe d’actifs partout dans le monde, et de se protéger contre les baisses de marchés, n’ont pas tenu leurs promesses, observe le Wall Street Journal. Les fonds d’allocation mondiale ont perdu en moyenne 6 % cette année au 16 décembre, selon Morningstar, contre un gain de 3 % du Dow Jones Industrial Average. Pourtant, ces fonds restent populaires. Les investisseurs y ont investi en net 16 milliards de dollars cette année à fin novembre, après 23 milliards en 2010.
La société de gestion espagnole Bestinver a lancé un nouveau fonds actions mondiales grandes capitalisations, Bestinver Grandes Compañias, pour parer à une éventuelle fermeture de ses fonds actions vedette pour des contraintes de capacité, rapporte Citywire. Sa gamme de fonds comprend actuellement Bestinver Internacional, Bestinfond et Bestinver Bolsa.
La société de gestion britannique Martin Currie, dédiée à la gestion actions, lance comme prévu son fonds marchés émergents Martin Currie GF – Global Emerging Markets Fund . Ce compartiment de sicav luxembourgeoise, conforme au format Ucits IV, est géré par Kim Catechis et ses co-gérants Alastair Reynolds et Divya Mathur, qui ont rejoint Martin Currie en 2010 en provenance de SWIP. Martin Currie GF – Global Emerging Markets Fund est un fonds de 40-60 lignes concentrés sur les meilleures idées d’investissement de Martin Currie, quelle que soit la taille des capitalisations.
Neuberger Berman vient de lancer un fonds obligataire haut rendement à duration courte, le Neuberger Berman Short Duration High Yield Bond Fund, un compartiment de son fonds irlandais Ucits, Neuberger Berman Investment Funds.Le fonds sera géré par l’équipe qui est responsable du Neuberger Berman High Yield Bond Fund, dont Russ Covode, Ann Benjamin et Tom O’Reilly, en utilisant le même processus d’investissement. Ce fonds représente un encours de 4,33 milliards de dollars au 30 novembre.Le nouveau compartiment est pour le moment uniquement enregistré en Irlande. D’autres agréments sont en cours.
The Spanish asset management firm Bestinver has launched a new global large cap equity fund, Bestinver Grandes Compañias, in order to prepare for any potential soft closure of its flagship equity funds due to capacity limitations, Citywire reports. The fund range currently includes Bestinver International, Bestinfond and Bestinver Bolsa.
Edhec-Risk Institute has released statistics for the performance of hedge fund strategies in November. Among the most important developments during the month, the fixed income market has seen a net decline, with traditional bonds showing their heaviest losses of the year (-1.20%), and convertible bonds giving up half of their gains in October (-2.74%). Commodities, after two months of high returns (1.55%), once again finished the month with net gains (0.13%). Credit spread (-2.23%) has also seen significant declines, bringing them to their lowest level since September 2009. Convertible Arbitrage strategy has been affected by the fall of the convertible bond markets and the narrowing of credit spread (-0.91%). CTA Global strategy managed modest gains (-0.13%). Equity Market Neutral strategy, for its part, has held stable (+0.02%), despite high short-term correlation with equity markets. Equity Market Neutral (0.02%) and Merger Arbitrage (0.17%) were the only equity-based strategies to post gains both in November and for the year (0.83% and 1.66%, respectively). On the other hand, Event Driven (-0.54%) and Long/Short Equity (-1.36%) were not able to reproduce their positive returns in October. In November, the fund of fund strategy (-0.91%) has sacrificed nearly all of its gains in October.
Neuberger Berman has announced the launch of the Neuberger Berman Short Duration High Yield Bond Fund, a sub-fund of its Irish-domiciled UCITS fund umbrella, Neuberger Berman Investment Funds.The Fund will be managed by the team that are responsible for the Neuberger Berman High Yield Bond Fund, using the same investment process. The strategy will offer a lower-risk approach which will be achieved by focusing on short-duration, high-grade bonds.The lead portfolio managers are Russ Covode, Ann Benjamin and Tom O’Reilly.
“Go-anywhere” funds, which may invest in asset classes of any kind anywhere in the world, and aim to protect themselves against falling markets, have not kept their promises, the Wall Street Journal reports. Global allocation funds have lost an average of 6% this year up to 16 December, according to Morningstar, compared with gains of 3% for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. However, these funds remain popular. Investors have placed a net USD16bn in these funds this year through November, after USD23bn in 2010.
About 10% of the Hungarian bond market is in the hands of Franklin Templeton Investments, Investment Week reports. The Hungarian newspaper Napi Gazdaság on 6 December reported that the group has accumulated more than HUF1trn (USD4.4bn) in Hungarian bonds.
HSBC Holdings has entered into an agreement to sell HSBC’s private banking business in Japan to Credit Suisse AG and Credit Suisse Securities (Japan) Limited. The value of the gross assets included in the sale was approximately USD2.7bn at 31 October 2011. The transaction is expected to complete during the second quarter of 2012.
Martin Currie, the specialist active-equity manager, has announced that its new fund, a UCITS IV-compliant Sicav that invests in global emerging markets (GEMs), is open to investors.The Martin Currie GF – Global Emerging Markets Fund is managed by Kim Catechis and co-managers Alastair Reynolds and Divya Mathur. The fund is a 40–60-stock, multi-cap portfolio of Martin Currie’s best investment ideas and is unconstrained at a country and sector level. Its benchmark is the MSCI Emerging Markets index.
China is about to be hit by a wave of quant hedge funds launched by Chinese quantitative asset management specialists, according to Asian Investor, reporting from the Battle of the Quants, held last week in Hong Kong. In China, one of the most rapidly-growing areas is CTA, the website notes.
The Libyan Investment Authority (LIA), the Libyan sovereign fund, is waiting to get back most of its assets, which are frozen abroad, according to Les Echos. The teams in place at the sovereign fund say that several possible scenarios are taking shape. Either the fund will become a strategic national investor, on the model of Qatar’s fund, or it will become a safeguard fund on the model of the Abu Dhabi fund Adia. The third possibility is that assets will be gradually sold off in order to finance reconstruction of the country.