p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Arnaud Gandon was recruited in August as CIO of the asset management division of Heptagon Capital, Hedge Week reports. Gandon spend 12 years at Union Bancaire Privée (UBP) in London, most recently as head of global equity. The group has also recruited Natalia Greslikova as director of institutional sales for Benelux, Germany, Austria and Switzerland. She was most recently managing director of sales at Gottex Fund Management, in charge of European clients.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Assets under management at Polar Capital have topped USD3bn in the six months to 30 September, at a total of USD3.05bn, compared with USD2.53bn as of the end of March 2010. Net inflows in the period under review totalled USD283m, while the acquisition of HIM Capital contributed USD249m to the increase in inflows.

Polar Capital Holdings has announced the formation of the Global Convertibles team with the hiring of David Keetley, Steve McCormick and Kendrick Li. It isanticipated that the team will launch the Polar Capital ALVA Global Convertibles hedge fund on the 1st November 2010. The fund intends to invest in liquid, global convertiblesecurities. The team joins from Vicis Capital based in New York and London. At its peak Vicis Capital managed USD5.8bn with USD3.3bn of Long Market Value committed to convertibles.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } On 18 October, Universal-Investment launches the European equities fund European Equity Selection R, on behalf of the asset management affiliate of Hamburg’s Berenberg private bank. The product will invest at least 51% of its assets in shares in firms of all cap sizes with their headquarters in the EMU. The management team, which selects equities which are fundamentally undervalued, is also authorised to invest in ETFs and to retain cash. Characteristics Name: Berenberg European Equity Selection R ISIN code: DE000A1C2XN2 Front-end fee: 5% Management commission: 1%

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } Since 14 October, Lyxor Asset Mangaement (Société Générale) has been offering four French-registered ETF products providing inverse replication of sub-indices of the Stoxx Europe 600 on the XTF segment of the Xetra electronic trading platform from Deutsche Börse. The products are the Lyxor ETF STOXX Europe 600 Automobiles & Parts Daily Short, Lyxor ETF STOXX Europe 600 Banks Daily Short, Lyxor ETF STOXX Europe 600 Basic Resources Daily Short and Lyxor ETF STOXX Europe 600 Oil & Gas Daily Short.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } There has been an unprecedented price war raging in the past few weeks between providers of ETF savings plans. After Comdirect and DAB Bank, Cortal Consors, the third largest major online broker, is now working on a new fee model, which is expected to result in a major price drop, according to a spokesperson cited by Handelsblatt. The war was triggered a few weeks ago by DAB Bank, which offers 66 ETFs from db x-trackers with “zero fees.” The client is charged only the spread between buy and sell and the annual account management commission. Maxblue, the online broker from Deutsche Bank, is also offering plans based on db-x-trackers, its sister company, with no front-end fees. A competing price cut at SBroker, the platform for the German savings banks, has not been ruled out.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Wall Street Journal reports that RiverNorth Capital is planning to launch a strategic income fund, the RiverNorth/DoubleLine Strategic Income Fund, at the end of December. The fund will be managed by Patrick Galley, CIO of RiverNorth, and Stephen O’Neill, a portfolio manager at RiverNorth, and Jeffrey Gundlach, the former TCW star manager who has gone independent to found DoubleLine Capital (Usd5.5bn in assets), of which he is CEO and CIO. The new product will be an open-ended fund; Gundlach’s contribution will be based on a core bond strategy and an opportunistic strategy which may use derivatives. According to its SEC filing, the fund may make use of short-term trading, and will have a short-term portfolio turnover rate of over 100%.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The Spanish minister of Economy and Finance has already signed or is about to sign tax agreements with 20 offshore territories which will then be withdrawn from the offshore tax haven blacklist established by Spain in 1991, which then included 48 countries, Cinco Días reports. Such information exchange and/or double taxation agreements have been signed with Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Luxembourg, Andorra and Panama. In the short term, similar conventions are expected to be signed with the Bahamas, Bermuda, Cyprus, Gibraltar, Guernsey, Jersey, Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands, the Isle of Man, Jordan, Oman, San Marino and Singapore.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } AXA Real Estate has added to its teams dedicated to open-ended real estate funds. Ian Gordine has been appointed as manager of the AXA Immoselect fund, while Achim Gräfen, who had previously managed the fund, will concentrate on directing AXA Investment Managers Deutschland GmbH, a position he has occupied since 2009. Bernd Hemmersbach has been promoted to Head of Distribution – Real Estate.

Hermes, the UK fund manager, has sent Klaus Wucherer, Infineon’s chairman, a letter pressing him publicly to present a succession plan in the next two weeks. In the letter, obtained by the Financial Times, Hans Hirt, head of corporate governance, wrote that he was “worried” about the speculation over the succession process.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } According to reports in Focus, German and Swiss experts are said to have found a spectacular solution which will allow the German tax authorities to recuperate EUR30bn from Swiss bank accounts of German tax evaders, without Switzerland needing to compromise its banking secrecy laws. The agreement is said to have been approved by the Swiss government in early October. It would involve a one-off, flat-rate levy of 35% (10 percentage points higher than the tax rate on capital gains in Germany), which Switzerland would transfer to Germany in order to provide the latter country with information on shareholders. In addition, the measures would be applied retroactively over a ten-year period, on the basis of hypothetical capital gains of 3% per year.

An analysis of the period 1999 to 2008 in quarterly 13Ffilings withthe SEC, stating the valuation of hedge funds’ positions on equities, reveals that about 7% of all statements of positions were falsified, meaning that hedge funds used other valuations than the market. The findings come in a working document from the Centre for Financial Research (CFR) at the University of Cologne, available at http://www.cfr-cologne.de/download/workingpaper/cfr-10-15.pdf.According to the authors of the study, Gjergji Cici (Mason School of Business), Alexander Kempf and Alexander Puetz (both of CFR- University ofCologne), the deviations show that hedge funds knowingly manipulate their valuation, as these variations are not random and serve the interest of managers.The authors show, firstly, that false valuations aim to make returns look better by reducing volatility and boosting the Sharpe ratio.Secondly, the divergences with reality are highest for funds which have the least risk to be controlled.Thirdly, the largest deviations are for hedge funds which are the most aggressive in the use of publicity materials which state their returns.Lastly, the study shows that suspicious performance profiles appear particularly for funds which most amply or most frequently falsify their equities positions.

In 2008, two quantitative management specialists founded FinanceCom Asset Management in Paris, with the help of the Moroccan private group FinanceCom. Now, Jean-Philippe Scholler, president, and Jean-Marc Divoux, CEO, are at the head of a 6-member team, and are planning to enlarge their product range and client base.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } On 14 October, Van Eck Global launched the Market Vectors China ETF (acronym PEK on NYSE Arca), the first ETF on the US market to offer exposure to Chinese A equities listed in Shenzhen and Shanghai. It provides synthetic replication, for the moment, of the shares of the CSI 300 index. Management commission is 0.72%. Van Eck says that there are already 29 other ETFs (all of them synthetic replication products) based on Chinese A shares in Asia, 24 of them in Hong Kong, three in Singapore and Taiwan, and two in Tokyo.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } The announcement of an agreement over the planned AIFM directive was put off last Thursday due to a lack of consensus between Parliament, the Commission and the European presidency, in another chapter to the saga, Agefi reports. Jean-Paul Gauzès, reporter to the European Parliament on the directive, is not concealing some aberrations in the redaction of the directive. The Parliament has made a large number of amendments, in total 1,690, and has thus been required to rewrite the draft. “The text is changing virtually every day,” and remains difficult to keep track of, even for lawyers, the newspaper reports. The Parliament has also blamed reversals of positions of member states, not least “France, which rallied a week and a half ago behind the idea of a European passport.” But despite the change in the French position, the question of a license for foreign funds remains at the centre of the disagreement. The UK would like to see national supervisors remain responsible for issuing licenses, while France is pushing for ESMA, the future European market supervisor, to hold the keys to the system. “The Belgian presidency will have to choose between them, putting one country out, which could be a bad sign for the future,” the reporter opines. A vote on the text is now planned for November, Agefi reports.

p { margin-bottom: 0.08in; } A new foreign asset management firm has recently made its first appearance in France, under the name E.I. Sturdza Strategic Management Ltd. Behind this slightly mysterious name hides an asset management unit of Banque Baring Brothers Sturdza SA, the former Swiss arm of the Baring bank, which is now wholly owned by its founder, the Prince Eric I. Sturdza and his partners. Founded in 1999, E.I. Sturdza Strategic Management Ltd. initially developed a range of funds for private clients of the Swiss bank. Relying on its expertise in outsourced management, it built its range on offerings from experienced managers who took the opportunity to go independent. For example, in 2008, E.I Sturda Strategic Management Ltd. teamed up with Lilian Co., the former star manager from Baring Asset Management Asia Ltd, who founded the firm LBN Advisors Ltd, in Hong Kong. Together they launced the Strategic China Panda Fund. “This type of partnership, bringing together operational quality and management talent, has allowed E.I. Sturdza Strategic Management Ltd. to attract well-known managers such as Frédérique Dubrion, former manager of the Gold and Energy funds from SGAM; Yutaka Uda, former director of Japanese investments for Baring Asset Management, Willem Vinke, former manager of Europe funds at Jo Hambro, and more recently, Michel Danechi, ex-head of trading emerging markets at Lehman Brothers,” explains Patrick Kopitz, one of the partners at Banque Baring Brothers Sturdza SA. “Before investing in a geographical region or an asset class, we first look to invest with talented managers,” he says. Though in principle E.I. Sturdza Strategic Management Ltd. demands exclusive rights to sales activity for the firm in which they sign an agreement, they do not buy a stake in capital. 10 funds have been released on this original model, covering asset classes and regions such as Japan, China, Europe, and natural resources. The first funds were based in Guernsey, but since 2008, E.I. Sturdza Strategic Managemetn Ltd. has been compliant with UCITS III. It will now launch two new UCITS III funds in October 2010, one focused on emerging Eastern Europe (including Turkey) with Danechi, who joined Armajaro Asset Management LLP in March 2009 as managing partners, and one fund focused on Europe, in partnership with Willem Vinke, CEO and CIO of Lofoten Asset Management Ltd. In total, E.I. Sturdza Strategic Management Ltd. has a relatively exhaustive range of products, which represents CHF1.5bn in assets. In 2009, E.I. Sturdza Strategic Management Ltd., registered its Strategic China Panda Fund with the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) in France. Other products will follow soon.

Les propositions du Haut Comité de Place pour promouvoir l’industrie française de la gestion d’actifs en Europe, adoptées vendredi, s’articulent autour de quatre axes à mettre en œuvre d’ici à 2012. Elles s’appuient sur une transposition de la directive OPCVM 4 avant fin mars.

Le Trésor a reporté la publication de son rapport semestriel sur les politiques de change

Le franchissement de la zone de résistance à 2.950-3.045 points s'avère nécessaire pour passer haussier pour les mois à venir

Le Haut Comité de Place a approuvé vendredi soir de nombreuses propositions afin de promouvoir la gestion française en Europe

Carlyle, KKR et Warburg Pincus seraient en négociations pour l’acquisition d’une participation indirecte de 15 à 18% au capital du principal fabricant indien de motos. Honda, qui détient 26% du capital de Hero Honda Motors, pourrait quitter le capital à l’occasion de cette réorganisation en deux temps à l’initiative de la famille Munjal dont la part serait portée à 36%.

Gage de confiance selon le quotidien, les fonds alternatifs se pressent aux portes de la Bourse de Londres. Après Brevan Howard la semaine passée, CQS pourrait annoncer l’introduction en Bourse d’un nouveau fonds. La taille de l’opération n’a pas encore été définie. RBS Hoare Govett a été mandaté en tant que teneur de livre et évaluera l’intérêt des investisseurs institutionnels dès cette semaine. CQS assure la gestion de 8,2 milliards de dollars d’actifs environ. Selon un client, le fonds vedette («Diversified Fund») afficherait cette année une performance de près de 22% après un bond de 7,69% rien qu’en septembre.

A l'approche des élections de mi-mandat, l'administration Obama reporte la tension sur les pratiques commerciales de la Chine

Philippe Troesch, chief investment officer chez Aberdeen AM

Elisabeth Cassagnes, responsable gestion obligataire et monétaire chez UFG-LFP

Vincent Guenzi, directeur de la stratégie chez Cholet-Dupont

Adam Cordery, responsable des stratégies de crédit Europe chez Schroders

Yves Maillot, directeur investissements et actions chez Robeco Gestions

Précédemment très liées au comportement du billet vert, elles sont désormais davantage corrélées à la devise japonaise

Nyse Liffe lance aujourd’hui un contrat à terme sur le lait en poudre. Cet instrument de couverture intéresse surtout les industriels