En 2009, les fonds commercialisés en Asie ont enregistré des souscriptions nettes de 95 milliards de dollars, selon le dernier Fund Flash de Lipper FMI. Ce montant est le plus faible depuis 2004 et ne représente que 19 % des ventes de 2007, qui avaient constitué un record absolu.La situation est très contrastée selon les marchés. Ainsi, Singapour, la Chine, la Corée du Sud et l’Australie ont accusé des rachats nets sur l’année, ce qui a pesé sur le total. Deux marchés ont en revanche permis de contrebalancer cette tendance négative : le Japon et l’Inde. Au Japon, les souscriptions nettes ont triplé à 46 milliards de dollars, soit un niveau comparable à celui de 2005, mais inférieur au pic de 2006. L’Inde a de son côté engrangé 62 milliards de dollars, soit le meilleur niveau jamais enregistré par Lipper, et trois fois le montant de 2007 (20 milliards). Les ventes en Inde et au Japon ont principalement concerné les fonds obligataires, qui de fait ont drainé les deux tiers des souscriptions asiatiques (63 milliards de dollars). Les deux catégories ayant attiré le plus de flux sont les obligations indiennes et les obligations émergentes avec respectivement 39 milliards et 13 milliards de dollars. Les fonds actions s’arrogent la deuxième place, mais loin derrière avec 18 milliards de dollars. La Chine a été le plus gros contributeur en matière de fonds actions avec 24 milliards de dollars, ce qui n’a pas empêché le pays de terminer sur un solde négatif de 18 milliards de dollars. Pour ce qui est de l’avenir, Lipper FMI note que plusieurs réformes pourraient changer la donne. Ainsi, le succès des fonds actions en Inde a été freiné par l’interdiction des commissions de ventes. La Chine va de son côté introduire des frais de sortie pour encourager l'épargne à long terme et limiter le trading à court terme. Enfin, en Corée du Sud, la règle qui favorisait les fonds onshore a expiré.

Pour 2009, Banca March déclare jeudi un bénéfice net de 154,2 millions d’euros, ce qui représente une diminution de 8,3 % sur l’année précédente. La banque privée dirigée depuis 1926 par la famille March a précisé qu’en fin d’année son ratio de fonds propres de premier rang (tier one) se situait à 19,7 % contre 17,1 % douze mois plus tôt.La filiale de gestion d’actifs, March Gestión, a enregistré 22 nouvelles sicav l’année dernière et son encours a gonflé de 32 % à 1,5 milliard d’euros.

Investors may currently buy equities, bonds, shares in Sicav funds, options, futures, warrants and ETFs on markets managed by Bolsas y Mercados Españoles (BME). After this summer, Cinco Días reports, the stock exchange operator is planning to open a platform which will compete directly with banks and savings banks, on which savings investors will be able to buy and sell shares in all types of investment funds. Jorge Izaguirre, director of equities at BME, says the firm’s ambition is to provide access to 2,668 Spanish funds and 551 foreign funds on sale in Spain, but that registration of the funds on the platform will be at the discretion of the management firms, on a voluntary basis.

Investors who lost money in the fraud orchestrated by Bernard Madoff through a fund offered by UBS will not be able to hold the Swiss bank directly liable, a Luxembourg court found on Thursday, Reuters reports. A small group of investors in the AlphaLux fund were seeking to file individual lawsuits against the bank, rather than going through the liquidators of the fund, but the Luxembourg court rejected their claims.

Grapevault Wine Investments is launching a new fund, which will invest in vineyards and rare wines, Citywire reports. 70% of the portfolio of the Grapevaule Wine Fund No. 1 will be invested in three segments of the wine industry: 30% in wine-related real estate, 30% in wine production, and 105 in marketing and distribution. The fund, which is planning a closing at EUR50m, will also invest 20% of its assets in rare wines and 10% in venture capital projects to support young start-up vineyards.

In early April, Aberdeen will release the Aberdeen Global - Emerging Markets Debt Local Currency fund, a sub-fund of the Luxembourg Sicav Aberdeen Global which invests in emerging markets debt in local currency, for sale. The fund will be released in France as well as in other countries. The sub-fund is managed by the emerging markets debt team at the Scottish management firm.

The Morningstar 1000 Hedge Fund index fell 1.2% in January, largely due to a rising US dollar against the Euro and other currencies, which affected hedge funds denominated in Euros, Hedge Week reports. The Morningstar US Equity Hedge Fund limited its losses to 1.4%, less than half of the decline of the S&P 500. The Morningstar Distressed Securities Hedge Fund gained 1.7% in January.

The planned AIFM directive, whose 1,600 proposed amendments are currently under study by the European parliament, is continuing to inspire lively debate. In Germany, the directive was the subject of many remarks at a financial seminar which brought together several actors in the area of asset management. Bernd Vorbeck, spokesman for the management of Universal-Investment, pointed out that asset management in Germany was particularly well regulated. Of EUR1.7trn in assets, 84% consist of regulated products, compared with only 31% in the United Kingdom, he said, the Börsen-Zeitung reports. With this in mind, the impact that the planned AIFM directive may have must not be underestimated. Limitations related to the enactment of the legislation could lead to costs fo as much as EUR1bn, Vorbeck claims. In other words, excessive regulation in an environment which is already very highly regulated would have counter-productive effects. What the sector needs is constructive regulation, the head insists, citing asset pooling as an example.

In Asia, overall sales flows for the year totalled USD95bn, which was the smallest volume since 2004 and just 19% of the sales in Asia’s peak year of 2007, says Lipper FMI in its latest Fund Flash. Individual market contributions varied considerably. Four markets (Singapore, China, South Korea and Australia) posted net redemptions for the year, dragging down the overall sales total. But two markets offset the negativity and delivered this year’s sales flows, keeping Asia as a whole in the black. The more established market of Japan trebled its annual sales to USD46bn, a figure on a par with its 2005 sales, though some way short of its 2006 peak. India, meanwhile, was more emphatic in its support with flows of USD62bn that were the best on Lipper FMI records and three times higher than its previous high of US$20bn in 2007. Sales in India and Japan were heavily tilted towards bonds. As a result, bonds were the clear winners of the year with two thirds of all Asian sales (USD63bn). The best bond sectors were Indian bonds (US$39bn) followed by Emerging market bonds with annual flows of USD13bn. Equity funds took second place overall but were a long way behind bonds with flows of USD18bn. China was the biggest player with an equity contribution of USD24bn, but China closed the year with its first ever negative total (USD18bn). Change could be in the pipeline. Indian support for equity funds has been knocked by a ban on commissions. China is to introduce sliding back-end charges to encourage long-term savings and less short-term trading, meanwhile South Korea’s capital gains tax rule, which favoured onshore funds, has expired.

Intech Investment Management, an affiliate of Janus Capital Group (USD159.7bn in assets under management as of the end of December), has announced the creation of a position for a senior managing director, which will be occupied by Stephen F. Brennan. Brennan will be in charge of developing relations with clients under the responsibility of Jennifer Young, president and co-CEO. Before joining Intech, Brennan was vice president, marketing at Research Affiliates. He was in charge of institutional sales in the United States.

CalPERS on 4 March announced the recruitment of Janine M. Guillot has chief operating officer for the Californian pension fund. She will report to Joseph A. Dear, chief investment officer, and will be in charge of deploying strategy in real estate, alternative management and public markets. Guillot previously worked at Barclays Global Investors (BGI), which was taken over by BlackRock in December 2009. She was managing director and chief operating officer for global fixed income activities. She will assume her new role on 19 April, replacing Ken Marzion, who will be retiring.

NYSE Euronext has announced that all ETFs traded on the NYSE Euronext Paris market of reference are, since 1st March 2010, eligible for the Deferred Settlement Service (SRD). This amounts to a total of 369 products, versus 147 previously. Thanks to this development, investors now have access to all Paris-traded ETFs with leverage from within a regulated and secure environment. These newly-eligible ETFs will not be admitted to trading on NYSE Euronext’s centralised borrowing and lending market. This category of assets, which are eligible for the SRD but not available for trading on the borrowing and lending market, is named “eligible for SRD, long only”.

Old Mutual Asset Managers (OMAM) is planning to launch the Old Mutual UK Specialist Absolute Return fund in May. The Irish-registered product will comply with the UCITS III directive, will offer daily liquidity, and will be managed by Luke Kerr. The product will invest primarily in UK midcaps which are not part of the FTSE 100 index. Management will follow that of the long/short hedge fund Old Mutual UK Specialist Equity, launched in March 2003 and registered in the Cayman Islands.

Andrew Moss, CEO of Aviva, has announced that the asset management affiliate of Aviva Investors will launch a series of absolute return funds based on various asset classes, as it has done in structured products, an area in which the firm has already released four funds based on the FTSE as underlying, Investment Week reports. Aviva Investors launched its first absolute return fund in August 2009, entitled UK Absolute Return Fund.

Two executives from Deka Investment and HSBC Global Asset Management, Michael Hallacker and Erich Schilcher, have gone independent to found the management firm Agathon Investment in Frankfurt. The firm will specialise in bonds and currencies. The two men will be joined by Christian Schiweck, former star manager from Deka and DWS, who last year bought a stake in the London-based management boutique MT Thaler, and who manages the Luxembourg fund m4 Alpha Bonds from Alceda Fund Management, which is advised by Agathon Invest. Agathon Invest, which is planning to specialise in serving institutional investors in the German-speaking countries, will launch open-ended funds and Spezialfonds; it will also accept mandates.

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and Dow Jones Indexes signed a Memorandum of Understanding to explore the creation of a series of indexes that could be licensed as the basis for investible products. It is envisioned that the flagship of this index series would be a blue-chip index to be called the Dow Jones Global Fund 50 Index. The announcement was made at the international conference on Innovative Financial Solutions for Development organized by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Bank and the French development agency in Paris. Dow Jones Indexes intends to add to its range of socially-conscious indexes that will complement its increasingly diverse range of products.

Rabobank, which has declared net profits of EUR2.28bn for 2009, compared with EUR2.75bn for the previous year, has posted a 25% increase in assets under management and custody, to EUR230bn. This includes Robeco, Sarasin, local Rabobanks and Schretlen & Co. Asset management and investment activities, however, earned net profits of only EUR13m, compared with EUR438m in 2008. Operating earnings for the division fell to EUR984m from EUR1.62bn, while operating costs fell to only EUR954m from EUR1.05bn.

The fund barometer by Lipper reveals that 69.23% of Spanish fund managers as of the end of February were neutral on equities, compared with 46.15% in January, while the percentage of managers who were overweight equities fell to 15.38%, compared with 38.46%. As Cinco Días reports, uncertainties related to the Greek debt crisis and the risk of contagion in Spain and other countries caused Spanish managers to put the enthusiasm they showed in 2010 in check. In general, the average weight of equities in portfolios fell as of the end of February to 39.35%, from 41.59% in January, while the average cash allocation rose from 18.92% in January to 19.03% last month.

Renta 4, with the Spanish RMBS Fund, Altamar with its Senior Loans fund, and Arcano, which with DWS has recently launched the Arcano Credit Fund, have become the most recent Spanish asset management firms to date to release funds based on bank loans, Expansión reports. The next two firms to follow suit will be N+1, and Mercurio, who is planning to launch a product similar to the Arcano fund, and will raise EUR50m for the project with the assistance of Mercapital.

According to the Financial Times, Jupiter Asset Management is laying the groundwork for a possible initial public offering. The fund manager, which manages just under GBP20bn, has asked creditors to approve an amendment to its GBP375m loan documents that would enable it to become publicly listed. Jupiter is majority owned by its managers. TA Associates has a minority stake.

Net profits at Schroders in 2009 increased to GBP95.7m, compared with GBP71.3m the previous year, despite a fall in pre-tax profits excluding one-time charges to GBP200.2m from GBP290.5m. One-time charges represented only GBP62.7m, compared with GBP167.4m. Due to this fact, pre-tax profits increased to GBP137.5m, from GBP123.1m. Total dividend for 2009 remains unchanged at 41 pence per share. Net operating revenues for asset management contracted to GBP679.2m, from GBP748.7m, while revenues from private banking fell to GBP97.7m from GBP111.3m, which the British management firm explains is a result of contracting margins and falling revenues from performance commissions. Pre-tax profits for asset management and private banking fell, respectively, to GBP192m from GBP249.8m and GBP20.1m from GBP38.2m. However, in the past year Schroders earned record net subscriptions of GBP15bn, compared with net redemptions of GBP9.6bn in 2008. As of the end of the year, assets totalled GBP148.4bn, compared with GBP110.2bn. Positive market and currency effects thus contributed GBP23.2bn.

Of the GBP148.4bn in assets under management declared by Schroders as of the end of 2009, the firm was managing GBP95.5bn for clients outside the United Kingdom, of which GBP38.4bn were in continental Europe and GBP35.9bn in Asia-Pacific. The United Kingdom, for its part, represents GBP52.9bn. The GBP7.7bn (compared with GBP4.9bn in 2008) at Bank of Communications Schroder, the Chinese joint venture, are not counted as part of the group’s total assets: they contributed GBP9.9m in profits (compared with GBP6.4m).

Des opérations de refinancement permettront aux banques de se financer sans limite au moins jusqu’en octobre

Ils ont divisé par deux leurs investissements en 2009. Mais les opérations ont rebondi au second semestre

Les bons résultats d’Allianz Global Investors (AGI) en 2009 sont attribuables pour l’essentiel à Pimco, dont l’encours s’est accru de 195 milliards d’euros (dont 107 milliards de souscriptions nettes) pour atteindre 689 milliards d’euros en fin d’année, constate le Handelsblatt. Parallèlement, reconnaît Joachim Faber, responsable d’AGI au directoire d’Allianz, 84 % du bénéfice d’exploitation ont été générés par Pimco, qui est chargé de l’obligataire, et seulement 16 % par la gestion actions.Depuis quelques semaines, il y a un motif de friction supplémentaire, parce que Pimco a annoncé son intention de se lancer dans la gestion actions qu’Allianz avait confiée à l’américain RCM. Mais Joachim Faber souligne que le procédé de gestion de Pimco est tout différent de celui de sélection de titres de RCM. Le manager n’exclut pas non plus que RCM tente une incursion dans le domaine obligataire, notamment dans celui des obligations d’entreprises.

Le gestionnaire munichois d’ETF du groupe Deka (caisses d'épargne allemandes), ETFlab Investment, a annoncé mercredi le lancement et l’introduction sur le segment XTF de la Deutsche Börse de son premier fonds indiciel coté d’obligations d’entreprises, le ETFlab iBoxx Euro Liquid Corporates Diversified. Ce produit de droit allemand (DE000ETFL375) à réplication physique offre l’accès à un panier diversifié de titres, l’indice répliqué comportant 75 émissions de sociétés dont le siège principal se trouve dans la zone euro, en Suisse, au Royaume-Uni, en Suède, en Norvège ou au Danemark, avec une préférence pour les titres à taux fixe.Le gérant n’est autorisé à entrer en portefeuille que deux titres du même emprunteur au maximum, et aucun des émetteurs ne peut peser plus que 7,5 % de l’encours. Les titres sont notés investment grade, soit au minimum BBB- , mais le plancher est fixé à A- pour les financières. L'échéance résiduelle des obligations se situera entre 1,5 et 10,5 ansComme pour l’ETF d’obligations d’entreprises lancé le même jour par db x-trackers (Deutsche Bank), la commission de gestion se situe à 0,20 %.

Gérant du fonds de fonds d’allocation d’actifs Popular Selección et directeur de la multigestion depuis 2000, Rafael Hurtado a été nommé directeur des investissements de la division gestion d’actifs de Popular Gestión en remplacement de Miguel Colombás, qui prend la direction générale de la société en remplacement de Carmen Ortiz (lire notre dépêche du 18 février).

Alors que l’association Inverco a annoncé que les gestionnaires étranger ont gagné du terrain sur le marché espagnol (lire notre Depeche d’hier), Funds People, relayé opar Expansión précise que les fonds ayant attiré les plus fortes souscriptions ont été le Robeco US Premium pour les actions, le Schroder ISF Euro Corporate Bond pour l’obligataire, le Carmignac Patrimoine pour les diversifiés et le CAAM Dynarbitrage Volatility pour l’alternatif.

Selon les proches du dossier, la Kutxa de Saint Sébastien met la dernière main à la cession de sa filiale de banque privée, le Banco Madrid, à Banca Privada d’Andorra (BPA), rapporte Cotizalia. Cependant, le dossier est encore bloqué dans l’attente de la ratification de l’accord sur l'échange d’informations fiscales entre l’Espagne et la Principauté d’Andorre. Kutxa avait acheté le Banco Madrid à la Deutsche Bank en 2001.

Dexia Asset Management a l’intention de faire enregistrer en Espagne son fonds de droit français Dexia Long Short Risk Arbitrage, un produit converti au format OPCVM III en décembre dernier, annonce Funds People. Ce produit à liquidité journalière est géré par la même équipe que le Dexia Risk Arbitrage dirigée par Sophie Elkrief.