Pension funds in the Netherlands have radically increased their use of external fund managers, according to the latest report from Dutch pensions regulator De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) cited by Citywire. Several pension funds deposited EUR174 billion into mutual funds which they had previously been managing internally. As a result of this, in 2009, the Dutch funds industry leapt to fifth position in the eurozone with total assets of just under EUR400 billion,.

Mark Fetting, chief executive of Legg Mason, wants to turn the US investment manager into a global investment manager. “Now 35 per cent of our assets are held by non-US clients. My goal is to get that to 50:50 or even more,” he said to the Financial Times Fund Management. At the moment he is travelling around the world, meeting shareholders, clients and colleagues, but also window-shopping for potential acquisition targets. He wants to get more capability in international equity, and many of the best international equity investors are based in Europe, many located right here in London. Legg Mason glanced at Pioneer, Unicredit’s asset management subsidiary which is currently on the market, but “I can’t see us being very interested”, says Mr Fetting.

According to a study by four university professors (Debarshi Nandy, Nadia Massoud and Keke Song of the Schulich School of Business, Toronto, and Anthony Saunders of the Stern School of Business at New York University), at 105 US firms which borrowed money from hedge funds between January 2005 and July 2007 (before the US regulatory authorities required more information on short positions), there was an average increase of 74.8% in short-selling of shares in those companies in the five days preceding the announcement of the loan. In contrast, The Wall Street Journal reports, there was no observed increase in short positions on shares in firms which borrowed money from banks in the same period. Short positions increased by 28.4% preceding the announcement that loans from hedge funds had been renegotiated, compared with a decline of 17.8% before the same announcements about bank loans. But it is not certain that the lending hedge funds themselves were the ones assuming these short positions.

BNY Mellon has completed its acquisition of PNC’s Global Investment Servicing Inc. (GIS) business, a leading provider of custody, fund accounting, transfer agency and outsourcing solutions for asset managers and financial advisors. The purchase price was USD2.31 billion.

On Thursday evening, BlackRock announced the launch of a new mutual fund focused on gold mining shares worldwide, entitled BlackRock World Gold Fund, which will be managed by Evy Hambro and Catherine Raw, two experts in the London natural resources team, which manages over EUR35bn. BlackRock is also repositioning its physical gold ETF, the iShares COMEX Gold Trust (acronym IAU on NYSE Arca). Investors will now have wider access to the gold market, and more flexibility in their allocation to gold in their portfolio, due to increased liquidity and lower fees. The repositioning will involve a reduction of the price per share in the fund, and an increase in the number of shares in circulation, through a 1-10 stock split, effective from 24 June. The sponsor fee has been reduced to 0.25% from 0.40% as of 1 July.

Lyxor on Friday launched two new ETFs on the Milan stock exchange, Bluerating reports. They are both double short funds: the Lyxor ETF Daily Double Short Bund (based on the Bund Future), and the Lyxor ETF Daily ShortDAX x2 (based on the DAX).

Hedge Week reports that the British management firm RAB Capital has appointed David Seex as chief executive officer of RAB Capital Asia. Seex will develop the activities of RAB Capital in Asia, and will oversee the Hong Kong office.

In a speech at the Fund Forum in Monaco last week, Eddy Wymeersch, chairman of the committee of European securities regulators (CESR), claimed that professionals and not regulators should be responsible for improving the transparency of UCITS-compliant ETFs and hedge funds, the Financial Times reports. He says some newcits are not really aimed at retail clients, and that there should be a mechanism to clearly indicate that retail investors should not invest in those products. On the subject of ETFs, Wymeersch would like to see issuers be required to provide more information about underlying assets, and to improve the information available on their websites. The CESR president also recommends that fund management firms improve their governance.

Fitch Ratings has released a criteria report outlining the agency’s approach to assigning ratings to asset managers on a national scale. For those countries where the capital markets and/or the investment management industry are relatively closed and, therefore, investment management practices may not be internationally comparable, and where there is demand for such ratings, Fitch may assign National Asset Manager Ratings to local asset managers or the local operations of international asset managers. It is important to note that each national rating scale is unique and reflects the particular characteristics of the local market concerned. National ratings are identified by the addition of a three-letter suffix for a specific country, such as ‘rus’ for National ratings in Russia. Fitch’s National Asset Manager Rating scale provides investors with a relative measure of an asset management organization’s vulnerability to operational and investment management failures relative to other managers in the same country. Managers are rated on a scale from ‘M1' to ‘M5', with a ‘M1' rating indicating the highest rating. Under the National Asset Manager Rating scale, a ‘M1' rating generally corresponds to asset management organizations with a strong financial standing, established track-record and processes/procedures at the forefront of local regulatory requirements, and market and client demand. Fitch may not assign its highest national scale asset manager ratings where it considers that even the strongest player in the local market has significant weaknesses relative to the agency’s expectations for that country. In assigning a National Asset Manager Rating, Fitch reviews the same elements as for internationally-rated managers and analyzes the following five categories: Company, financial conditions and staffing; risk management and controls; portfolio management; investment administration; and technology.

As in the previous fiscal year, SEB Asset Management on 1 July distributed an unchanged dividend of EUR2.10 per share to investors in the real estate fund SEB ImmoInvest. Redemptions from the fund have been frozen since 5 May 2010. Returns in the period ending on 31 March totalled 3.7%.

The asset management firm Deka Immobilien announced on Friday that it has sold the office property located at 19 Moskauer Straße in Düsseldorf for EUR97m, at a gain compared with its venal value.

From 16 August, Sauren will reopen subscriptions to the fund of funds Sauren Global Defensiv, which was hard closed on 31 March (see Newsmanagers of 22 January). Since then, the fund’s assets in cash, which represented 23% of the fund as of the end of first quarter, has been reduced to 13% of assets. As of the end of June, the Sauren group had EUR2.2bn in assets.

Skandia’s Spectrum range of risk-rated funds has launched on Cofunds. The launch follows Skandia’s decision to make the range available to advisers who use Distribution Technology’s Dynamic Planner risk profiling service. The range of funds, which are managed by Skandia Investment Group, is proving popular with advisers having already attracted over £550m via the Skandia Investments Solutions platform and its life and pensions fund range.

Jupiter Asset Management has appointed Kathryn Langridge as an emerging markets fund manager. She will join Jupiter’s emerging markets desk in September. Jupiter has now some GBP1.2bn invested in products covering many of the key emerging markets in the world. The emerging markets team manages eight mutual funds focusing on emerging Europe, Asia ex-Japan, China and India. Jupiter intends, in due course, to bolster this range by launching a global emerging markets fund for Kathryn to manage, subject to regulatory approval. At Lloyd George Asset Management, Kathryn Langridge has been managing long only emerging market equity investment portfolios since 2007. Before that, Kathryn worked for 17 years at Invesco Perpetual with roles including Head of Asian Investments and Head of International Equity Products.

Deutsche Bank has announced the closure of its Hungary and Poland based wealth management offices following poor performances, according to Citywire. The Budapest and Warsaw offices were part of the Sal Oppenheim private bank network, a firm which Deutsche Bank took over in last October.

Agefi reports that the investment firm Assya Capital (Assya), which invests on its own behalf, and also has an insurance platform, and Global Equities Capital Markets (Global Equities), a specialist in equities intermediation, corporate finasnce and asset management, last week announced that they have merged to create a “pan-European financial entrepreneurial business.” Thierry Leyne, founder of Assya, will be chairman of the supervisory board of the new entity, entitled Global Equities Compagnie Financière. The business will operate in five areas: intermediation, asset management, corporate finance, private equity, and insurance, with asset management a priority. The firm is aiming to increase assets from EUR100m currently to EUR1bn by the end of 2012, with three planned acquisitions currently in the works in Europe, the newspaper reports.

Siemens is selling off a further 43.9% of the Munich-based asset management firm UBS Real Estate KAG to UBS Global Asset Management, bringing its stake in the former Siemens KAG up from 51% (acquired in late January 2005) to 94.9%. The transaction will be completed by October, and Siemens will retain the remaining 5.1% stake in UBS Real Estate KAG.

Mark Lovett, chief investment officer for UK equities at Allianz RCM, is leaving the group. His funds will be taken over by Allianz managers. Jeremy Thomas, who is already in charge of the Allianz RCM UJK Growth Fund, will take over the UK Unconstrained Fund and the UK Equity Fund. Neil Dwane, chief investment officer for Europe, will take over the Charter European investment trust.

The British investment management association (IMA) on 2 July announced that it is merging the UK Equity Income and UK Equity Income and Growth categories from 1 July. The professional association has also decided to reformulate and reinforce tests for the income portion of the category. The new UK Equity Income sector will now include funds which invest at least 80% of their assets in UK equities, and which aim for returns including distributed dividends equivalent to more than 110% of the performance of the FTSE All Share index at the end of the fund’s investment period. The objective of 110% should be achieved in three years, the IMA says. To assist retail investors and their advisors, the association also proposes to publish annual statistics on the performance of each fund on its website.

Gartmore has launched the Gartmore AlphaGen Pan-European Equity Hedge Fund. The Fund will be managed by John Bennett, Senior Investment Manager, European Equities, who joined the asset management company at the beginning of the year from GAM. John Bennett and his team currently manage EUR4.0bn in European equities. The Fund will be managed in a similar style to the GAM European Equity Hedge Fund, which John ran since its inception in January 1999 until September 2009. This is Gartmore’s first hedge fund launched as a sub-fund of a Dublin-domiciled Qualified Investor Fund umbrella (QIF). The decision to domicile the fund in Dublin was made in anticipation of possible requirements arising in the forthcoming Alternative Investment Funds Directive and in line with the increased investor demand for alternatives funds to be domiciled in the European jurisdictions.

As part of a cost reduction measure, John Ions, who became CEO of Liontrust Asset Management in May, has dismissed the global equities management team led by Ross Hollyman, with immediate effect and a period of gardening leave, Investment Week reports.

Les gestions reviennent à une position neutre sur les actions, et préfèrent se renforcer sur le cash et sur les actifs alternatifs

En juillet, la prévision moyenne à 6 mois sur les taux à 10 ans de la zone euro est ressortie à 3,06 %, suggérant un potentiel de tension de 50 pb

Les participants ne modifient pas leur exposition sur la classe d’actifs en juillet, après un deuxième trimestre volatil

Les gestions misent ainsi sur une reprise de 18 % de l’indice parisien au second semestre. Les révisions à la baisse augmentent sur le S&P 500

Le retour à 2.400-2.450 points, voire dans la région des 2.190-2.260 points, reste le scénario le plus probable

Malgré 125.000 emplois non agricoles perdus, le taux de chômage a encore baissé en raison des sorties définitives du marché du travail

L’agence de notation Fitch Ratings a annoncé le 1er juillet qu’elle confirmait la note Asset Manager «M1» de la société Alcentra (groupe The Bank of New York Mellon) pour ses activités de gestion européennes.Cette décision reflète la stabilité des activités historiques d’Alcentra (CLO) ainsi que les efforts de diversification mis en œuvre, y compris les situations spéciales et les fonds structurés.

Avec 41,3 milliards de dollars levés grâce au bouclage définitif de 82 fonds, le secteur mondial du private equity a enregistré au deuxième trimestre 2010 sa collecte la plus faible depuis 2003, selon Preqin. Le sondage de juin montre que 76 % des investisseurs ont simplement l’intention de maintenir leur allocation du private equity pour les douze prochains mois.

Duet Asset Management, une société de gestion alternative basée à Londres et gérant 2,3 milliards de dollars, est en train de lever des capitaux pour un nouveau hedge fund qui sera dirigé par deux des traders en matières premières les plus expérimentés au monde, rapporte le Financial Times. La société a recruté Tony Hall, un ancien de Credit Suisse-Glencore, et Arno Pilz, un ancien d’UBS et Lehman Brothers, pour gérer ce Duet Commodities Fund.