Manulife Asset Management a nommé James Chen, un ancien de Goldman Sachs AM, en tant que responsable commercial institutionnel pour l’Asie, rapporte Asian Investor. Il sera basé à Hong Kong. Il remplace Avere Hill, qui a quitté la société fin janvier.

Au troisième trimestre, les hedge funds ont connu leur pire trimestre depuis la crise financière de 2008. En moyenne, ils ont accusé une perte de 2,8 % en septembre, ce qui porte la baisse sur le trimestre à 5,5 %, selon les chiffres de Hedge Fund Research cités par le Financial Times. Les fonds ayant été les moins performants ont été ceux concentrés sur les actions des secteurs de l’énergie et des ressources naturelles, qui ont chuté de plus de 9 % en septembre.

Le nombre de candidats à la création de fonds d’investissement étatiques ne cesse de s’allonger sur tous les continents malgré la crise de l'été, rapporte Les Echos. Les agences de notation encouragent ce mouvement. Malgré la chute des marchés, leurs actifs ont modestement progressé de 1,7% au troisième trimestre, à 4.737milliards de dollars selon les estimations du Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, grâce notamment aux rentrées d’argent significatives dont certains ont encore bénéficié (fonds du Moyen-Orient).

Les «pooled funds», assimilables à des mutual funds mais avec moins de contraintes juridiques, sont de de plus en plus utilisés par les family offices, relève une étude de Cerulli Associates. Une évolution qui n’est pas sans risques pour les gestionnaires de fonds mais qui présente aussi des opportunités."Ces véhicules ne sont pas nouveaux, mais ils regagnent du terrain dans les family offices, apportant avec eux une expertise qui permet de réduire les coûts et de ménager davantage d’options pour le client», estime Rob Testa, analyste senior chez Cerulli et expert sur les problématiques liées à la clientèle haut de gamme.Compte tenu toutefois des modifications réglementaires et autres en cours, les fournisseurs de pooled funds pourraient évoluer dans leur positionnement pour devenir à la fois des gestionnaires d’actifs et des distributeurs. Les multi family offices utilisent déjà des pooled funds qui ressemblent à des fonds de fonds ou des fonds nourriciers. Cette pratique est toutefois beaucoup moins courante du côté des single family offices qui font alliance avec des fournisseurs ou d’autres riches familles pour créer des pooled funds.Selon Cerulli, les family offices seront peut-être moins tentés à l’avenir de recourir aux fournisseurs de fonds de fonds et pourraient en revanche donner la préférence à leur expertise maison. Autrement dit, on pourrait assister à une évolution structurante du secteur puisque tant les family offices que les gestionnaires d’actifs seraient à la fois fabricants et distributeurs de produits. Les sociétés de gestion devront donc compter avec cette nouvelle concurrence. Trouver de nouvelles voies de distribution dans ces fonds peut être intéressant car il est évidemment plus facile d'être intégré dans un pooled fund que dans chaque portefeuille de différentes familles. Comme dans le cadre d’un fonds d’allocation, le produit d’une société de gestion pourrait entrer en scène lorsque le pooled fund est sélectionné. Un modèle de vente institutionnelle, en quelque sorte. Dans tous les cas, la tendance existe et ne présente pas que des risques pour les sociétés de gestion…

Les hedge funds de Fortress Investment Group n’ont pas été épargnés par les turbulences estivales mais les stratégies crédit ont particulièrement bien résisté, selon les documents réglementaires publiés jeudi dernier. Deux hedge funds dédiés au crédit restent en territoire positif malgré les pertes subies au mois d’août. Le Drawbridge Special Opportunities Fund LP qui a perdu 1,29% au mois d’août mais surperforme son indice de référence, et le HFRX Event Driven, qui a cédé 4,05% mais affiche toutefois un gain de 6,54% depuis le début de l’année. Le Drawbridge Special Opportunities Offshore Fund s’est replié de 0,53% au mois d’août, mais affiche une performance de 9,2% depuis le début de l’année. Les stratégies macro ont été le point faible du mois de septembre. Le Fortress Macro Fund a dégagé un léger gain de 0,29% le mois dernier, surperformant le HFRX Macro/CTA Index qui a perdu 2% sur la même période. Mais depuis le début de l’année, le fonds accuse un repli de 7,32%. Le Fortress Asia Macro Fund a pour sa part chuté de 2,5%, la perte depuis le début de l’année s’inscrivant à 1,23%.

AlianceBernstein a annoncé le 6 octobre le lancement d’un blog dédié à sa clientèle et aux investisseurs pour les informer en temps réel sur les problématiques d’investissement.Le blog dénommé «Context» concerne toutes les classes d’actifs et fera appel à l’expertise de plusieurs responsables d’AllianceBernstein qui interviendront régulièrement sur le blog, à l’instar de Sharon Fay, responsable actions et chief investment officer de Global Value, doug Peebles, responsable du fixed income ou encore Greg Singer, directeur de la recherche au sein du Wealth Management Group.

A Bethesda, ProShares a annoncé le 6 octobre le lancement des deux premiers ETF sur le marché américain à offrir une exposition avec effet de levier sur le gaz naturel, le ProShares Ultra DJ-UBS Natural Gas avec un levier de 2, et ProShares UltraShort DJ-UBS Natural Gas, avec un levier de - 2. Ces effets de levier s’entendent par rapport à la performance journalière de l’indice Dow Jones-UBS Natural Gas Subindex, avant frais. Tous deux sont chargés à 0,95 % et ont été créés le 10 avril 2011.Le gestionnaire précise avoir levé ces trois dernières années plus de 2,5 milliards de dollars sur des ETF matières premières à effet de levier. Le BOIL et le KOLD sont les neuvième et dixième de la série dont toutes les composantes (ETF sur l’or, l’argent, le pétrole brut, les matières premières au sens large) sont des produits avec un effet de levier de 2, tant en long qu’en short.

Construite sur le reliquat de la division de négoce d’actions et de teneur de marché de Madoff, Surge Trading a entamé sa procédure de liquidation le mois dernier, faute d’avoir trouvé un repreneur ou de nouveaux financements, rapporte The Wall Street Journal. Les fondateurs de Surge avaient payé 25,5 millions de dollars pour l’activité de teneur de marché de Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. Mais les coûts d’exploitation liés au négoce à haute fréquence et la baisse d’activité du marché boursier ont plombé la société.

La chute de l’or en septembre est venue détériorer encore un peu plus les résultats de John Paulson, dont les plus grands hedge funds souffraient déjà depuis le début de l’année, rapporte The Wall Street Journal. En effet, son fonds spécialiste de l’or a perdu 16,4 % le mois dernier alors que le cours de l’or a baissé de seulement 11 %, et il ne gagne plus actuellement qu’un peu plus de 1 % depuis le début de l’année alors que le métal jaune affiche une hausse de 16 %.D’autre part, le Recovery Fund a perdu 14 % en septembre et 31 % depuis le début de l’année, tandis que l’Advantage Fund perdait 12,1 % sur le mois et plus de 32 % pour les neuf premiers mois de 2011 et que l’Advantage Fund Plus chutait de 19,4 % et 47 %, respectivement. L’encours des fonds Advantage de Paulson & Co, qui était de 38 milliards de dollars il y a quelques mois, serait tombé à moins de 30 milliards, selon les proches du dossier. Et les investisseurs ont jusqu’au 31 octobre pour décider s’ils veulent sortir des fonds Advantage à la fin de cette année…

GSO Capital Partners, la plate-forme mondiale de crédit de The Blackstone Group (34 milliards d’euros d’encours) a annoncé l’acquisition, pour un montant non divulgué, de l’irlandais Harbourmaster Capital Management, un gestionnaire de crédits à effet de levier (leveraged loans) dont les actifs sous gestion et sous conseil se situent à 8 milliards d’euros.L'équipe de Harbourmaster à Dublin restera chargée des fonds Harbourmaster et formera une plate-forme commune avec les activités européennes de GSO dans le domaine des leveraged loans pour mettre au point de nouveaux fonds destinés aux investisseurs européens. La plate-forme ainsi constituée affichera un encours de 11,5 milliards d’euros, avec une équipe de 40 professionnels basés à Dublin et à Londres.

ATP, the largest Danish pension fund (USD122bn), has announced that it has renegotiated its swap contracts, in order to avoid having to accept French government bonds as collateral, though these continue to have good ratings, according to the Bloomberg Risk Newsletter. The renegotiation also affects Italian bonds and bonds from other countries of Southern Europe. The fund will now only accept German, Danish and US government bonds.

At the Responsible Investor conference in Amsterdam, Alex van der Velden, head of equity strategy at the Netherlands management firm PGGM, has announced that the group’s responsible investment portfolio of EUR3bn has outperformed its benchmark by 17% since its launch three years ago, IPE.com reports. The portfolio aims for long-term financial returns, integration of ESG criteria, and shareholder engagement in a small number of firms.

Manulife Asset Management has appointed James Chen, formerly of Goldman Sachs AM, as head of institutional sales for Asia, Asian Investor reports. He will be based in Hong Kong, and replaces Avere Hill, who left the firm in late January.

The head of real estate strategy at Aviva, Chris Laxton, has told Money Marketing that the Chinese residential real estate market is in a bubble market situation that may last five years. Laxton says that the Asia Pacific real estate fund from Aviva, with assets under management of about GBP318m, has no exposure to the Chinese market.

The former managing director of Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities, Alexandre Konmont, head of the Japanese equities strategy, will launch a fund dedicated to Japan, Bloomberg reports. Konmont, who left Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities in July this year, has since founded his own firm, Milestone Asset Management, which already offers a long-only fund. The recent volatility on the market, however, has led to plans to create a long/short hedge fund dedicated to Japanese equities, at a moment when Japan is inexpensive for the first time in a very long time.

In Bethesda, ProShares on 6 October announced the launch of the first two ETFs in the United States to offer leveraged exposure to natural gas, the ProShares Ultra DJ-UBS Natural Gas (acronym on NYSE/Arca: BOIL), with leverage of 2, and ProShares UltraShort DJ-UBS Natural Gas (KOLD), with leverage of -2. This leverage is invested against the daily performance of the Dow Jones-UBS Natural Gas Subindex, before fees. Both funds charge fees of 0.95%, and were founded on 10 April 2011.The management firm says that in the past three years, it has raised over USD2.5bn for leveraged commodities ETFs. BOIL and KOLD are the ninth and tenth funds in the series, all of which (ETFs based on gold, silver, crude oil, and commodities more generally) are products with leverage of 2, either long or short.

Hedge funds from Fortress Investment Group have not been spared from the turbulence on the markets this autumn, but credit strategies have held out particularly well, according to regulatory documents released last Thursday. Two hedge funds dedicated to credit have remained in positive territory despite losses in August. The Drawbridge Special Opportunities Fund LP lost 1.29% in the month of August, outperforming its benchmark index, the HFRX Event Driven, which lost 4.05%. The fund shows a gain of 6.54% since the beginning of the year. The Drawbridge Special Opportunities Offshore Fund lost 0.53% in August, but has earned 9.2% since the beginning of the year. Macro strategies were the weak point in September. The Fortress Macro Fund, however, posted a slight gain of 0.29% last month, outperfoming the HFRX Macro/CTA Index, which lost 2% in the same period. Nonetheless, since the beginning of the year, the fund shows losses of 7.32%. The Fortress Asia Macro Fund, for its part, lost 2.5%, with losses since the beginning of the year totalling 1.23%.

Theam, a fund management affiliate of BNP Paribas, is planning to quadruple its investments in hedge funds dedicated to Asia next year to EUR200m, to take advantage of strong growth in the region, Eric Debonnet, who has been head of the alternative management team at Theam for a few weeks, told Reuters on 7 October. “In Asia, it is really urgent for us to extend our range,” says Debonnet. Theam manages about EUR1bn in 15 funds of hedge funds, for insurers, institutional investors and private banking clients. Debonnet, based in Paris, says that Theam is planning to launch a fund of hedge funds by the end of the year or early 2012. the firm is hoping to increase its assets under management to EUR3bn in the next three years, of which 20% will be invested with Asian managers, he says.

In order to further the continued growth of institutional demand for ETF products in Asia, the Dutch ETF-specialist market maker Flow Traders has set up an office in Singapore, with a team that will initially include four to five people, Asian Investor reports. Flow Traders currently employs about 150 people, distributed between Amsterdam, New York, and now Singapore.

Surge Trading, created out of the remnants of the stock-trading of Bernard Madoff’s business, last month entered a liquidation process, due to a failure to find a buyer or fresh source of financing, the Wall Street Journal reports. The founders of Surge paid USD25.5m for the market-making activities of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC. But the operating costs related to high-frequency trading and a drop in market activity dragged the company down.

The co-founders of the French asset management boutique Day Trade Asset Management (DTAM), Adrien Fuchs and Thierry Dumont, both former traders, have decided to part ways. Fuchs will buy out his partner’s 50% stake in the capital, giving him complete control of the firm. The amicable separation will not lead to any changes in the activities of DTAM, which received a license in 2002 from the French financial market regulator, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF). The firm, which has three staff, offers three funds, two of which are equity funds relying on the firm’s house specialty, day trading. Day trading, which literally involves buying and selling assets in the same day, exploits variations in price which equities undergo daily. The first fund invests in French equities, Day Trade Action France, while the second is a market neutral fund, Day Trade Equity Neutral. A bond fund, Saint Chamond Oblig Inter, completes the range. DTAM currently manages EUR20m, down from over EUR40m in July 2007. Negative market effects have wiped out assets, but the firm has also undergone the suspension of its fourth fund, a leveraged products, which had used Lehman Brothers as its prime broker, and which found itself caught up in the legal battle over responsibility of depositories (see Newsmanagers of 9 April 2009). The fund has not reopened, but Fuchs would like to be able to restart a fund using the same model. Among its other plans, DTAM, whose clients are mostly retail, would like to find a commercial partner. It is already working with TPM Investeam in the institutional segment.

AllianceBernstein on 6 October announced the launch of a blog dedicated to its clients and investors, to inform them in real time about investment issues. The “Context” blog will deal with all asset classes, and will draw on the expertise of several heads at AllianceBernstein, who will regularly post on the blog, including Sharon Fay, head of equities and chief investment officer at Global Value, Doug Peebles, head of fixed income, and Greg Singer, director of research at the Wealth Management Group.

The fall of the gold markets in September brought a further deterioration to results for John Paulson, whose largest hedge funds had already taken a hard hit since the beginning of the year. Paulson’s gold specialist fund lost 16.4% last month, while the price of gold fell by only 11%, and the fund shows gains of only 1% since the beginning of the year, although the metal has gained 16%.The Recovery Fund has also lost 14% in September and 31% YTD, while the Advantage Fund lost 12.1% in the month of September, and has lost 32% in the first nine months of 2011, and the Advantage Fund Plus has lost 19.4% and 47%.Assets in the Advantage Fund from Paulson & Co, which totalled USD38bn a few months ago, have fallen below USD30bn, according to sources familiar with the matter. Investors have until 31 October to decide if they want to withdraw from the Advantage fund by the end of this year.

In Europe, corporate issuers rated in the speculative category as of the end of second quarter represented 24.3% of all corporate issuers, compared with 19.2% one year ago, according to an article published by Standard & Poor’s (“A Snapshot of the Corporate Ratings Distribution for the U.S., Europe, Emerging Markets, and Other Developed Regions.”) Out of 1,218 issuers, 922 were rated investment grade, while 296 were rated speculative. The agency says that the median rating in Europe in second quarter went from A- to BBB+. The percentage of issuers rated AAA, AA and A was 29.3% as of the end of June, compared with 55.4% at the end of June 2010. The percentage of issuers rated BBB< BB and B, meanwhile, has increased to 49.3% from 46.1% previously. Worldwide, the percentage of corporate issuers rated speculative grade has increased to 44.1% of all issuers as of the end of June, from 41.6% one year previously, for a total of 2,667 businesses, up from 3,379 rated investment grade.

Three recruitments for London, five for Munich, two for Luxembourg: Invesco Real Estate (IRE) is scaling up its Euoropean personnel with ten recruitments for product management, management of funds investing in hotels, asset management, finance, and fund accounting.Andrew Hills (ex Corestate) joins IRE in London as director of client portfolio management in the European Product Management team. He will focus on development and client relationships in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia.The team specialising in funds investing in hotels has gained Hans-Peter Hermann (ex ArabellaStarwood Hotels) as its senior asset manager in Munich, and Erik Jacobs (ex Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing) as transactions manager in London.Christian Freundl (ex KGAL) and Neehar Pattni (ex IPD) have been recruited as director of asset management in Munich and asset management analyst in London, respectively. Freundl will be head of a retail asset portfolio covering all of Germany for French institutional clients, and the German assets in a European pooled fund.Daniel Köhler (ex Landesbank Berlin and BayernLB in London) joins the Finance Department at IRE in Munich, where he will be in charge of financing structuring and debt-based financing for all real estate assets in the United Kingdom and continental Europe.IRE has also recruited two new account managers in Munich for the fund accounting unit of its asset management division. Verena Lorena has just finished her studies, while Dieter Zieser joins from Taurus Investment Holdings. They will be in charge of fund administration and reporting for investors in funds and pan-European mandates at IRE.In Luxembourg, the IRE team has gained the addition of two former employees of AIG Global Real Estate Luxembourg. Fabrice Coste joins as General Manager, and Marion Geniaux joins as Senior Fund Finance Manager.

BlackRock has announced Al Denholm has joined BlackRock’s Multi-Asset Client Solutions (BMACS) team in the newly created role of managing director and regional head of BMACS’ business in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). In this role, he will be responsible for leading BMACS EMEA activities working closely with Michael Huebsch, managing director and global head of BMACS, in the oversight of the group’s four main functions: Client Strategy, Solutions Portfolio Management, Active Asset Allocation and Research, and Business Management. He will also assume the direct responsibility for the active asset allocation and research team and serve on the BMACS management committee. Al Denholm joins BMACS from ING Investment Management (ING IM), where he was a member of the four person leadership team responsible for overseeing ING IM’s investment management activities in more than 20 countries.

According to statistics from the Geneva-based firm Alix Capital, the UCITS Alternative Index Global which measures the performance of UCITS-compliant hedge funds, lost 1.33% in September, after losses of 1.81% in August. Total losses for the first nine months of the year total 3.85%. The eleven sub-strategies are all in the red for last month, and only commodities show positive returns (0.10%) for the first three quarters of the year. The strategies showing the heaviest losses in September are emerging markets (-6.67%) and commodities (-4.01%). Emerging markets also show the heaviest losses by far in January-September (-11.69%), followed by long/short equity (5.42%) and funds of funds (-4.08%).

The European covered bond council (ECBC) on 7 October announced plans for a label for covered bonds. The objective of the initiative, which is undertaken in cooperation with issuers, investors and regulators, is to promote liquidity and to strengthen the secondary covered bond market, the council says in a statement. The certification process is based on the principle of self-certification, and is placed under the supervision of the ECBC steering committee. Plans to create the label will be presented at the next plenary sesssion of the council in spring 2012. At the end of 2010, covered bonds represented worldwide assets of over EUR2.5trn, and total issues of EUR600bn.

In third quarter, hedge funds had their worst three months since the financial crisis began in 2008. On average, they suffered losses of 2.8% in September, bringing losses for the quarter to 5.5%, according to statistics from Hedge Fund Research, cited by the Financial Times. The funds which performed least well were those focused on equities in the energy and natural resources sectors, which lost more than 9% in September.

Das Investment reports that the third-party marketer (TPM) and consultant Accelerando Associates, which has locations in Germany and Spain, will open a branch office in London by the end of the year, and will recruit new staff in Frankfurt and Valencia from January 2012. The announcement was made by Philip Kalus, founder and managing partner.