Depuis la contraction d’activité qui a suivi la crise financière, le secteur des hedge funds s’est nettement redressé. Il a terminé l’année 2010 sur une progression de ses actifs de près de 150 milliards de dollars si bien que les actifs sous gestion s’inscrivaient à fin décembre à 1.917 milliards de dollars.Mais la crise financière n’a pas seulement eu un impact à court terme. Elle a aussi entraîné des modifications à long terme de la structure du marché et des modèles de développement, souligne la société de conseil Celent dans une étude sur les hedge funds («Hedge Funds 2011 : Navigating Tumutluous Waters»). Les hedge funds ont notamment cherché à diversifier leurs sources de financement pour constituer un socle plus large d’investisseurs stables. Dans cette perspective, ils ont notamment «institutionnalisé» leurs contrôles et amélioré leur transparence et leur liquidité. D’où par exemple la ruée sur les véhicules au format Ucits III. Les investisseurs de référence dans les hedge funds comprennent désormais les institutionnels, les family offices et les fonds de pension, avec une évolution de la demande incluant, outre les traditionnels fonds long/short, les stratégies internationales. Les fonds de pension notamment sont devenus un interlocuteur de taille pour les hedge funds. Un fonds de pension moyen attribue généralement environ 2,5% de son portefeuille à un hedge fund, une augmentation significative par rapport à la situation une dizaine d’années plus tôt. La plupart des fonds de pension investissent dans les hedge funds par le biais des fonds de fonds. Les petits fonds de pension devraient poursuivre dans cette voie, mais Celent estime qu’un nombre croissant de fonds de pension vont donner la priorité à un accès direct aux gérants. De leur côté, les hedge funds de taille moyenne ou petite devraient aussi réduire leur dépendance aux fonds de fonds, qui ont subi une forte décollecte dans le sillage de l’affaire Madoff. Fin 2009, les actifs des hedge funds issus des fonds de fonds totalisaient environ 500 milliards de dollars, en baisse de 17% par rapport à l’année précédente et de 40% par rapport aus sommets observés deux ans plus tôt. La proportion des actifs des single hedge funds issus des fonds de fonds est ainsi tombée à 30% en 2009 contre 40% l’année précédente. Au quatrième trimestre 2010, les fonds de fonds ont encore subi une décollecte de 68,4%, contre seulement 28,9% pour les single manager funds. Celent estime aussi que la consolidation du secteur, qui a déjà donné lieu à d’importantes opérations de rapprochement (l’acquisition de GLG Partners par Man Group, le rachat de Thames River par F&C), devrait se poursuivre. Une évolution qui va favoriser une «défragmentation» du secteur qui devrait être constitué à terme de deux grandes catégories d’acteurs, les très grands hedge funds d’un côté, les boutiques spécialisées de l’autre. En 2011, les hedge funds devraient d’ailleurs accélérer leurs investissements mais leurs dépenses informatiques seront pour l’essentiel consacrées à la maintenance en attendant le détail des réglementations en gestation pour mettre en œuvre de nouvelles solutions. Les dépenses d’informations devraient ainsi s’accroître de 4,9% dans le monde entre 2009 et 2014, l’Asie enregistrant la plus progression (7,2%), devant l’Europe (5,6%) et l’Amérique du Nord (4,4%).

Agefi Switzerland reports that banks in Hong Kong which sold financial products with ties to Lehman Brothers have agreed to reimburse tens of thousands of investors. The banks will buy back a large proportion of shares known as mini-bonds, which were guaranteed by the US business bank and sold to about 40,000 investors, before their value collapsed as the business went bankrupt. The total value of the shares, before the Lehman bankruptcy, was HKD15.7bn (EUR1.43bn). The agreement will allow “all clients to get back a substantial portion of their investments,” the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) announced on 27 March. The KHMA claims that savings investors will receive 85% to 96.5% of their investments, compared with only 60% to 70% under a previous agreement.

A former employee at Och-Ziff in Singapore, Zain Fancy, has filed lawsuits against the New Yokr hedge fund entity Och-Ziff, Bloomberg reports. Fancy claims that Och-Ziff Singapore owes him USD7.9m in salary and equities. Fancy joined Och-Ziff to create an affiliate specialised in real estate, Och-Ziff Real Estate Singapore Pte, but was then fired for failing to declare his involvement in a US Justice department and Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation into suspected corruption at Morgan Stanley, where he was head of real estate and banking activities in Asia.

Daiwa Capital Markets Hong Kong (Daiwa Securities Group) has announced the appointment of Joost Lobler as head of sales for Asia (ex Japan) for its Global Asset Services activities. Lobler previously worked at Butterfield Fulcrum as head of sales for Europe and Asia.

HSBC Global Research on 24 March announced the launch of its first CNH bond index, the HSBC Offshore Renminbi (RMB) Bond index, aimed at institutional investors who hold bonds and savings certificates through CNH (the offshore yuan bond market in Hong Kong). Citi is also planning to launch its own index, the Dim Sum Bond index, which will replicate the performance of CNH bonds.

The Wall Street Journal and CNBC have published a list of names of candidates to acquire subprime bonds from AIG, totalling about USD30bn in assets held by the Fed in the ad-hoc vehicle Maiden II, Les Echos reports. Several major hedge funds would like to bid on the bonds backed by sub-prime real estate mortgages from AIG, which were acquired by the Federal Reserve (Fed) at the height of the crisis in order to protect the US insurer from bankruptcy. According to the financial news network CNBC, citing sources familiar with the matter, hedge funds interested in the bonds include the hedge fund of the billionaire John Paulson, DoubleLine Capital, Avenue Capital Group and Oaktree Capital Management.

The private equity investor Longreach Group will announce this Monday that after nine months, it has completed the first round of fundraising at USD125m for its second Japan fund, which is aiming to eventually reach USD750m in assets, the Wall Street Journal reports. Interestingly, some of the investment commitments were made after the earthquake.

direxionshares has announced the launch of three new “bear” ETFs in bonds. The first of the three funds is the Direxion Daily Total Bond Market Bear 1x Shares (US25459Y3062), with the acronym SAGG, which charges 0.65%. It inversely replicates the Barclays Capital U.S. Aggregate Bond Index. The second is the Daily 7-10 Year Treasury Bear 1x Shares (US25459Y1082), which is the inverse mirror of the NYSE 7-10 year Treasury Bond Index, with the acronym TYNS. The net management commission is 0.65%. Lastly, the 20 Year Plus Treasury Bear 1x Shares (US25459W4052, acronym TYBS), which also charges 0.65%, inversely replicates the performance of the NYSE 20 Year+ Treasury Bond index.

PerTrac, a US provider of financial software for the asset management sector, has announced that it will now host the UCITS Alternatives index from Swiss Alix Capital and its 13 sub-indices of UCITS-compliant hedge funds on its platform, Hedge Week reports. The index currently includes 700 funds, with total assets of EUR108bn.

Pimco has announced the recruitment of Elizabeth MacLean and Jason Duko. The two former employees of Lord Abbet will join the asset management firm in early April and will be appointed as managers specialised in bank loans, and as executive vice president and senior vice president, respectively.

During a recent visit to Paris by Alexander Gorra, director of the Brazilian platform BNY Mellon Arx (USD7.1bn as of the end of December), the former Paris office of BNY Mellon Asset Management has launched a promotion of an Irish-registered fund focused on Latin American infrastructure, the BNY Mellon Latin America Infrastructure fund (see Newsmanagers of 29 November 2010 and 11 January 2011), with assets of about USD22m, on the French market. The diversified product will be made available to institutionals as well as multi-managers and distributors.The Irish fund has a portfolio of about 35 positions, selected with a bottom-up approach, and, due to the nature of the sector, top-down analysis. In the selection of stocks, Alex Gerra will consider operators and providers of equipment equally, but clearly has a preference for Brazilian stocks, which account for 70% of the portfolio. Other countries present in the portfolio include Mexico, Chile and Peru.The other core areas of development for 2011 in France are continued sales efforts for the local currency emerging market debt fund BNY Mellon Emerging Markets Debt Local Currency Fund (from the affiliate Standish); the Global Real Return fund from Newton (see Newsmanagers of 24 March 2010), and absolute return strategies from the boutique Insight.

Fidelity Capital Markets, an affiliate of Fidelity Investments which offers trading and settlement services to retail and institutional investors, has appointed a new president, Brian B. Conroy. Conroy was previously head of global equity trading at Fidelity Management & Research Company.

Man Group on 25 March announced that it has finalised an agreement with Citi Global transaction Services, to provide administration services worldwide. From the end of March, the Securities and Fund Services unit at Citi will take charge of shareholder services and transfer agency for AHL and multi-management products from Man, which are distributed worldwide by the Man intermediary and distributor network.

Tom Bower, head of private wealth management for the Americas, has announced in an email relayed by Bloomberg that Patrick Harris is replacing Jeff Whitaker, who is resigning, as COO of private wealth management for the Americas at Deutsche Bank. In London, Johannes Baratta, head of key clients, and Colin Woolcock, vice-chairman of private wealth management, have also resigned (see Newsmanagers of 25 March).The private wealth management division of Deutsche Bank saw pre-tax losses of EUR168m and net outflows of EUR1bn in 2010.

Cem Dikmen, who is already a member of the management team and head of client relationships, has been appointed as CEO of CMC Markets for Germany and Austria, Douglas Richards, CEO of CMC Markets UK plc, has announcd.CMC Markets, a specialist in CFDs, opened its new trading platform in Germany a few days ago. The British firm says that it is relying on the German market for a good part of its future development.

Since the beginning of this year, Petercam has toughened the sustainable development approach of its European equities fund Petercam Equities Europe Sustainable, the former Petercam Equities Europe Ethical fund, in order to satisfy demand from numerous institutional investors and multi-managers.The Belgian-registered product (EUR79.5m) is distributed in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The management team, led by Lieven Op de Beeck, applies the selection process already used for bonds in the Petercam L Bonds Government Sustainable fund (see Newsmanagers of 8 July 2009) to equities. In other words, the fund is no longer based solely on the grid provided by Ethibel (Vigeo), but instead its managers use a more critical approach, reprocessing data from the sustainable development universe, within a time-frame of one month to liquidate the positions which are to be excluded. To achieve this, the Belgian management firm uses a matrix developed by Stijn Decock, who uses a best-in-class selection from rankings provided by Vigeo, with a detailed report for each share. Petercam also receives alerts in case of serious or controversial incidents.

Hong Kong and Singapore have doubled in size as centres for the world’s biggest hedge funds over the past 12 months – at the expense of London and New York.According to @font-face { font-family: «Arial"; }@font-face { font-family: «Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: «Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } figures compiled by Hedge Fund Intelligence, the Asian cities are home to 18 hedge funds managing more than USD1bn compared with only 10 a year ago.London welcomes 63 managers running assets of more than USD1bn, while New York remains the hedge fund industry’s main centre, with 128. However, the two cities have seen their share of hedge fund assets decrease.

DWS Investments on Friday evening confirmed to Newsmanagers that Andreas Römer, who for a time had been head of the Paris office of the group, before management was centralised in Frankfurt, will on 1 April become director of the emerging markets equities team, and will retain responsibility for emerging market debt management.The move comes following the resignation of Thomas Gerhardt, who was head of the emerging markets equities team, and supervised the management of the DWS Top 50 Asean and Asia, DWS BRIC Plus, Emerging Markets Asia and Emerging Markets Typ O funds, with assets of about USD5bn in total. The DWS Top 50 Asia fund will now be managed by Andreas Wsendelken, and the BRIC fund will be taken over by Robert Kalin.

Philippe Jabre bought Japanese equities just after the earthquake, but lost his cool, and resold them the following week, just before the market rebounded. The mistake cost the Swiss manager of the hedge fund Jabre Capital Partners (USD6bn in assets) USD300m, although the rally on US equity markets has helped some of his funds, the Wall Street Journal reports.The hedge fund JabCap Global, the firm’s largest fund, with USD1.5bn in assets, has lost 7% in March, and 3% since the beginning of the year.However, although Jabre Capital has lost 6 months of returns, there have been no outflows.

Mellon Transition Management (MTM), an affiliate of BNY Mellon, has announced the recruitment of Mark Bewick as managing director of relationship management and business development in its transition management team. He will be in charge of institutional clients in the UK and Ireland.

The Deputy Director General of the Luxembourg investment fund association tells Newsmanagers about the various European regulatory challenges to the fund industry, and extols the advantages of the Luxembourg market in a hyper-competitive environment.

Following approval by the European Parliament, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) at the end of last week announced that Verena Ross has been confirmed as the first executive director of the new authority, which has been in place since 1 January. The management team at ESMA is now complete. The chairman of the Authority, Steven Maijoor, will begin on 1 April. The date on which Ross will begin in her new role will be announced soon.

Asian Investor reports that Lyxor Asset Management will launch a managed futures fund aimed at Hong Kong retail clients. The fund (Lyxor Episolon Managed Futures Fund) is an Irish vehicle, launched initially in 1999, but which at the time was aimed exclusively at Japanese institutional clients.

Outflows form equities funds dedicated to emerging markets topped USD26bn in the first months of the year to 23 March, according to the most recent statistics from EPFR Global. It has been the worst start to a year since statistics began in 1995.In the week ending on 23 March along, equities funds underwent outflows of USD7.68bn, of which Usd2.65bn were from emerging markets alone. Bond funds, however, saw net inflows of USD1.86bn.Among the BRIC countries, investors avoided Brazil, India and China, but Russian equities funds saw subscriptions on such a scale that since the beginning of the year, net inflows now total over USD3bn.

Thames River Capital is launching an absolute return fund to invest in global high yield bonds, Citywire reports. The Thames River Global High Yield Bond fund will be managed by Stephen Drew and Mehrdad Noorani. The objective is returns of 10% per year, with target volatility of 10% to 12%.

FRM Capital Advisors (FCA), the investment unit of the London-based fund of hedge fund group Financial Risk Management, with assets under management of USD9bn, is planning to launch three to four hedge funds in 2011, Reuters reports. One of the funds may be based in Asia, the firm’s COO, Patric de Gentile-Williams, says. Last October, the firm had already invested USD50m in a hedge fund based in San Francisco, Sensato Capital Management. In October 2009, FCA invested in the Hong Kong hedge fund Isometric Capital.

Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) is planning to launch its first UK income equities fund, Investment Week reports. The fund, which will be launched during second quarter 2011, will be managed by Richard Black, currently an analyst in the group’s British equities team.

The real estate fund Credit Suisse Real Estate Fund Green Property (CS REF Green Property) from 4 to 15 April 2001 undertook a capital increase of up to CHF309m. One existing share is worth subscription rights for one new share. In total, a maximum of 3 million new shares will be issued. The issue price is set at a net CHF103 per new share, the bank announced on 25 March in a statement. The CS REF Green Property fund is the first Swiss real estate fund to invest exclusively in projects and sustainable properties in attractive urban locations in Switzerland, which meet the requirements of the new “greenproperty” label.

The Spanish police on Friday arrested Germán Cardona Soler and two other people in Valencia, suspected of orchestrating a Ponzi scheme which cost about 100,000 people in 110 countries about EUR215m. Finanzas Forex promised to deliver total returns of 10% to 21%, Cinco Días reports.The CNMV had warned the public since 7 April 2008 about the Finanzas Forex brand, pointing out that its operator, Evolution Market Group, had no license to provide investment services.

Johanna Kyrklund, responsable de la gestion Multi Assets chez Schroders