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23/02/2010

Threadneedle to extend its range of Luxembourg Sicavs

Simon Davies, president of Threadneedle, has stated that sub-funds of the Luxembourg Sicav (USD6bn in assets in total) are easier to sell in Asia and Latin America than British-registered funds, Funds People reports. Assets under management for Asian investors now total USD2bn-USD3bn. In addition, the Sicav, which now has 255 sub-funds, will serve as an incubator for new products from Threadneedle and the Ameriprise group. Two funds from the American management firm J&W Seligman (acquired by Ameriprise in 2008) will be integrated into the Sicav, one of which is themed on global tech stocks, and the other on commodities. In addition, Threadneedle is planning to house UCITS III-compliant hedge funds, such as the US Crescendo, in the Sicav. For Latin America, the president has announced that Threadneedle is in the process of registering 20 new products in Chile (where 11 others have already been granted a license), and that 30 more will be added to the Sicav in the next few months. Threadneedle is also registered in Peru, and is keenly studying the Colombian and Brazilian institutional markets.
23/02/2010

Invesco PowerShares launches an ETF of closed-end funds

On Friday, Invesco PowerShares launched an ETF investing in US closed-end funds that replicates the S-Network Composite Closed-End Fund Index SM index. The fund is entitled PowerShares CEF Income Composite Portfolio, trades under the acronym PCEF, and distributes dividends on a monthly basis. Currently, the index includes 71 closed-end funds. Under normal conditions, the manager will invest at least 80% of assets in shares of funds belonging to the index.
23/02/2010

Chi-X and BATS gain market share

In January, the Chi-X and BATS platforms both gained market share, according to market indicators published by Crédit Agricole Cheuvreux, and jointly established with the provider of valuation solutions TAG. Chi-X now has a market share of about 16%, and is already the largest site for the execution of capital transactions in Europe, while LSE and Borsa Italiana are considered separate segments. For shares of the FTSE 100 index, Chi-X accounted for an average of 27% of liquidity as of last week, and handled over 50% of trading volumes on the LSE. This trend casts into doubt the legitimacy of established prices on the primary market. Most supply and demand spreads on Chi-X and BATS have improved, confirming that there is a relationship of direct dependency between spread and market share. In January, this development could have been the result of the arrival of new traders making high-frequency trades on MTFs. “The lack of post-trade transparency associated with the disturbance of pre-trade transparency by high-frequency orders makes the optimization of trading without heavyweight investment technologies more difficult teach month,” a statement says.
23/02/2010

David Marcus returns at the helm of his own business

David Marcus, a former portfolio manager from Franklin Mutual, has launched two funds at his new firm Evermore Global Advisors, where as well as being co-founder, he is CIO and Lead Portfolio Manager, Mutual Fund Wire reports. Evermore Global Value Fund and Evermore European Value Fund both have a total expense ratio (TER) of 0.99% for A, I and C class shares. The funds, launched on 31 December, are already available via the Pershing platform. They will also be made available on the institutional platforms from Fidelity, Schwab OneSource and TD Ameritrade by the end of the month, Mutual Fund Wire reports.
23/02/2010

FrontPoint Partners creates a team dedicated to direct loans

FrontPoint Partners (Morgan Stanley group) announced on 19 February that it has created a new investment team as part of its platform. The team, which will be led by Stephen Czech, will operate a strategy dedicated to creating and investing in guaranteed loans to SMBs, largely in the United States. Czech was previously a managing director and portfolio manager at Gottex. Clients of Gottex will continue to have access to investment opportunities offered by Czech and his team. As of 31 December 2009, FrontPoint Partners managed about USD7bn in single and multi-strategy vehicles.
23/02/2010

Planned integration of BNPP IM and FIM moving ahead rapidly

Fitch Ratings states in a report published on 22 February that the planned integration of BNP Paribas Investment Partners (BNPP IP, ‘M2+’) and Fortis Investments (FIM, ‘M2,’ but on a rating swatch) is progressing rapidly “considering the diversity of activities and implantations concerned,” and is on schedule. The major organizational areas of the new merged entity have been defined, particularly in terms of the management team and operational staff. With EUR530bn in assets under management as of the end of December 2009, the new merged BNPP IP and FIM ensemble has a strong presence in Europe and hopes to increase its presence outside its domestic European markets, France and Benelux, which represent nearly 65% of assets.
23/02/2010

Invesco may drop AIM brand

Mutual Fund Wire reports that Invesco is rumoured to have decided to abandon the AIM brand. The AIM Charter fund would be renamed as Invesco Charter. However, Invesco is planning to retain the Van Kampen brand name, whose acquisition is expected to be completed in the next few months.
23/02/2010

Deutsche Bank and Sal. Oppenheim to merge wealth management activities

Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management will be uniting its wealth management activities in Austria with those of Sal. Oppenheim Jr. & Cie as part of a single structure. The entity will be led by Bernhard Ramsauer, who will report to Marco Bizzozero, CEO of Deutsche Bank Switzerland. The affiliate will be registered as a bank, and will operate under the Deutsche Bank brand name. The structure will be in charge of wealth management activities in Central and Eastern Europe for the group, while asset management activities of Sal. Oppenheim will continue to trade under the Sal. Oppenheim name.
23/02/2010

Pimco faces lawsuit

The US Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal by Pimco, paving the way for a USD600m lawsuit against the company to proceed, says the Financial Times. A group of traders allege the bond investment house cornered the market in 10-year Treasury bonds issued in 2005, forcing those with short positions to choose between paying monopoly prices to close their positions or buying an expensive futures contract to offset them. They are demanding more than USD600m in damages over alleged misconduct, which Pimco denies.
23/02/2010

Threadneedle adds to Asia team

As part of an initiative to develop its activities in Asia, Threadneedle will transfer William Lowndes, its head of Asian distribution, from London to Hong Kong, effecting 1 April. He will be head of the local team, and will be in charge not only of development but also of strengthening Threadneedle’s strategic partnerships with distributors including Standard Chartered Bank (Stanchart) and Tokio Marine, while continuing to work in close collaboration with private and commercial banks, family offices and institutional clients. The British asset management firm has also announced the recruitment of Jon Allen on 25 January as deputy head of Asian distribution, in which role he will assist Lowndes. He will be based in Singapore. Allen spent the last two years as CEO and a shareholder in Carnelian Capital and Obverse Capital, management firms specialised in Asian distressed debt. He was previously CEO for Asia-Pacific of PRUPIM (Singapore), where he set up the real estate investment activities, which now have over USD1.5bn in assets.
23/02/2010

Nikko AM launches a green bond fund

Nikko Asset Management will this month launch the Nikko AM World Bank Group, which will invest 80-100% of its assets in green bonds from the World Bank. The fund will target institutional investors in Europe and the Middle East.
23/02/2010

Strong growth in fund assets in 2009

According to statistics from the European Central Bank (ECB), assets in non-money market investment funds in the Euro zone as of the end of December totalled EUR4.955trn, compared with EUR4.035trn twelve months previously, which represents an increase of 22.8%. In the same period, assets in money market funds contracted to EUR1.201trn from EUR1.250trn.
23/02/2010

Insynergy and GAM launch a China fund

The investment firm Insynergy and the management firm GAM are to launch an absolute return fund dedicated to China that complies with the UCITS III directive by mid-April, MoneyMarketing reports. The fund, entitled Insynergy Absolute China Fund, will offer the GAM long/short strategy for China, which was previously only available to investors via hedge funds. Insynergy points out that the Greater China Equity strategy from GAM, led by Michael Lai, who will managee the new fund, has earned returns of nearly 157% since its launch in July 2006, while the benchmark index, the MSCI Zhong Hua, has gained only 49.96%. Lai will construct a portfolio of 15 to 70 positions, of which 15 to 60 will be long, and up to 20 may be short. To conserve the manager’s ability to generate alpha, the fund’s size will be limited to USD250m.
23/02/2010

AMF hands down penalties against two Richelieu Finance managers

The AMF has sentenced Julien Quistrebert and Nathalie Pelras, both managers at the management firm Richelieu Finance, to a pecuniary sanction of EUR30,000. The decision was announced on Monday, 22 February, on the website of the financial market regulator, and will also be published in the annual yearbook of sanction verdicts by the Commission. Quistrebert, manager of the Richelieu Evolution fund, and Pelras, with whom he co-manages Richelieu Europe, were found “in neglect of duty in the use of insider information,” the AMF states. The trades in question took place in 2007, when the Netherlands-registered firm Completel Europe NV, a national telecommunications operator dedicated largely to businesses, was the object of a takeover bid from the firm Altice B2b on 30 August. On 22 August 2007, according to the AMF report, Quistrebert, manager of FCP funds at Richelieu Finance Gestion Privée, was given advance information about the operation by a banker in the corporate finance department of HSBC – including, the next day, the share price the potential acquirer was planning to offer. At that time, Quistrebert, made large-scale acquisitions of shares for the Richelieu Finance fund, and also informed Pelras, who did likewise for the Richelieu Europe fund.
23/02/2010

Madoff: New preliminary investigation begins in France

Les Echos reports, citing Le Figaro, that a new preliminary investigation was initiated in Paris on 5 February into an aspect of the Madoff case. The investigation originates from a complaint lodged by a sales agent who placed USD1m in a fund from Kingate Management, based in Bermuda, one of the funds which funneled investments back to Madoff as part of the fraudulent network established by the former US broker, who has been sentenced to 150 years in prison. The investigation is centered on a Paris investment consulting firm, whose name has not been disclosed, which is accused of organized fraud, abuse of confidence, money-laundering and the unlicensed practice in the banking profession. The Paris prosecutor’s office could not be reached to confirm the reports. However, Julien Visconti, a lawyer for the sales agent, states that PriceWaterhouseCoopers Bermuda and Citi Hedge Fund Services (Citi group) are also accused ot having played a role in the organized fraud.
23/02/2010

BNPP IP/Fortis Investments : l'intégration progresse rapidement, selon Fitch

Au terme d’une étude consacrée à l'état d’avancement du projet d’intégration entre BNP Paribas Investment Partners (BNPP IP) et Fortis Investments (FIM), Fitch Ratings arrive à la conclusion que ce processus progresse rapidement et selon l'échéancier prévu. Le nouvel ensemble pesait fin décembre quelque 530 milliards d’euros d’encours.Parmi les points forts des deux protagonistes, l’agence de notation met en exergue les moyens importants de BNP Paribas Fund Services (BPFS) et le dispositif de gestion des risques de BNPP IP mis en place autour de l’outil RiskMetrics. Du côté de FIM, Fitch relève l’efficacité de la plateforme technologique et les principes de gouvernance.
23/02/2010

Diversified funds don’t necessarily mean diversified risk

Funds managed in a diversified manner do not necessarily provide diversified risk. A study undertaken by Skandia of 489 balanced funds reveals a wide range of risk ratings, from 2 to 10 on a risk scale of 1 to 10, while the average rating would fall at about 5. Only 28 funds, or 6% of the sample, have a rating of 5. The average risk rating for the funds was 7. The disparities in risk ratings do not necessarily mean that diversified funds represent a poor investment, but they do mean that investors should be aware of the risk profile of each fund.
23/02/2010

A new emerging markets income fund

Somerset Capital Management, a boutique founded by Jacob Rees-Mog, is launching one of the first income funds to focus on emerging markets in the United Kingdom, the Financial Times reports. The Emerging Dividend Growth Fund offers yield of 4.6%.
23/02/2010

BMW reduces longevity risks

Abbey Life, a company of the Deutsche Bank group, will take on the longevity risks of the British pension fund of BMW (GBP3bn), and will transfer part of it to a consortium of reinsurers which includes the German firm Hannover Rück (Hannover Re), Pacific Life Re, and Partner Re, the Börsen-Zeitung reports. The deal covers retirement liabilities for 60,000 pensioners, who are former employees of Mini, Rolls Royce, and mostly (about half) from Rover, which was an affiliate of the Bavarian group between 1994 and 2000.
23/02/2010

Several appointments at Harcourt and Vontobel

Harcourt Investment Consulting has appointed Iván Poza as global director of development. Since 2004, he had been a partner and deputy director of the Spanish firm Harcourt Investment SGHC, and was responsible for Harcourt as well as Vontobel Group in Spain, Portugal and Latin America. He will serve in his new role from Zurich and Madrid. Meanwhile, José Luis Ezscurra, who was director of sales for Harcourt in the Iberian Peninsula, was appointed head of the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America at Harcourt Investment (Vontobel Group). He will be in charge of advising, distribution, and sales of commodity and hedge funds of funds. Vontobel has also recently announced that Marco Baccheta, head of equity sales at Neue Zürcher Bank, will in August take over as head of sales for brokerage activities of Vontobel Group, replacing Eugen Brenner, who wanted to hand on some of his responsibilities but will continue to act as director of the external asset managers (EAM) branch.
23/02/2010

Stanley Fink teams up with Hite Capital Management

International Standard Asset Management (ISAM), the London-based hedge fund management firm led by Stanley Fink, announced on 22 February that it has signed a strategic alliance with ite Capital Management (HCM), led by Larry Hite. By the agreement, Hite and two of his partners, Alex Geyserman and Gilbert Lee, will join ISAM as shareholders and directors. The move is an important step for ISAM, whose objective is to set up a multi-strategy strategy platform of liquid hedge fund strategies. The new alliance alliance will also bring the creation of ISAM Systematic in April, and the ISAM Fusion Fund, a managed accounts fund, soon thereafter. Hite, who is considered a forefather of systematic trading, founded HCM and was co-founder of Mint Investment Management, which transformed Man Group into one of the largest managers of publicly traded hedge funds.
23/02/2010

SIG exports its expertise to Sweden

Skandia Investment Group (SIG) has made significant moves to export its Spectrum risk-targeted fund concept to Sweden. Skandia Nordic has taken on board the concept, which was first launched in the United Kingdom in June 2008, and has developed its own range of risk-targeted funds. Since its launch, Spectrum has attracted over GBP400m in assets despite the financial turbulence.
22/02/2010

Un ancien ministre va prendre la tête d’Assogestioni

Assogestioni, l’association italienne des professionnels de la gestion, va avoir un nouveau président. Il s’agira de Domenico Siniscalco, que le conseil de direction de l’association a décidé à l’unanimité de proposer à l’assemblée annuelle du 19 mars 2010 comme candidat à la présidence. Cet ancien directeur général du Trésor et ancien ministre de l’Economie et des Finances est depuis 2007 vice-président européen et responsable de l’Italie de Morgan Stanley.Domenico Siniscalco succédera ainsi à Marcello Messori, qui ne se représente pas pour le prochain mandat (2010-2013). Selon Il Sole – 24 Ore du 20 février, l’initiative de la nomination de Domenico Siniscalco serait venue d’Intesa Sanpaolo et d’UniCredit, deux poids lourds de la gestion d’actifs en Italie.
22/02/2010
Fonds

Henderson veut séduire les investisseurs danois

Henderson Global Investors a reçu le feu vert des autorités de tutelle pour la commercialisation de sa gamme de Sicav Horizon sur le marché danois, a indiqué Citywire. Henderson proposera ainsi 18 fonds au travers des produits de la gamme Horizon, qui représente au total quelque 3,4 milliards d’euros, avec, entre autres, le Horizon China Fund (286 millions d’euros) qui a dégagé en 2009 un rendement de 125,2% avec sa stratégie long/short.
Fonds
22/02/2010

Encore plus d'épargne dans les chariots Carrefour

Selon la Tribune, Carrefour, le groupe de distribution français, va créer une banque européenne en 2010 pour la France, l’Espagne, l’Italie et la Belgique. L’entité aura notamment pour objectif de bénéficier de synergies et d'élargir l’offre avec par exemple des produits d’assurance et d'épargne.
22/02/2010

Axa PE pourrait reprendre une partie du private equity de Natixis

Natixis a annoncé le 19 février avoir reçu une offre d’acquisition d’AXA Private Equity portant sur une partie de son pôle de private equity, à savoir les activités d’iXEN Partners et de NI Partners (en cours de rapprochement) ainsi que celles d’Initiative & Finance Gestion représentant la majeure partie des actifs pour compte propre en France. Cette initiative s’inscrit dans le cadre de l’évolution de Natixis Private Equity vers la gestion pour compte de tiers annoncée en août 2009.Cette offre conditionnelle inclut un projet de levée de nouveaux fonds avec les équipes existantes, fonds dans lesquels Natixis resterait co-sponsor aux côtés d’Axa Private Equity. Les actifs cédés ainsi que les nouveaux fonds seront gérés ou conseillés par les équipes actuelles. L’offre valorise le portefeuille de ces entités à 507 millions d’euros, auquel s’ajouterait, en fonction des performances du portefeuille, un complément de prix éventuel. Le prix de l’offre est à comparer à la valeur IFRS globale du portefeuille au 31 décembre 2009 de 543 millions d’euros.Afin d’étudier le cadre et les conditions d’une transaction, Natixis et AXA Private Equity ont signé une lettre d’ouverture de négociations exclusives fixant une période d’exclusivité d’un mois en vue d’élaborer un accord définitif et de permettre à AXA Private Equity de procéder à un audit confirmatoire du portefeuille. Dans ce contexte, la suspension du cours d’Initiative & Finance Investissement a été demandée.
22/02/2010

Société Générale Securities Services étend un de ses mandats

Société Générale Securities Services (SGSS) a annoncé, vendredi 19 février, étendre son mandat de tenue de compte et de conservation auprès du groupe Generali. SGSS vient en effet de se voir confier la conservation des actifs de Generali Belgique, filiale du groupe, précédemment détenus par un autre prestataire. Ce nouveau mandat, qui a entrainé le transfert des portefeuilles de Generali Belgique début février 2010, vient s’ajouter aux services de conservation et services dépositaires déjà fournis à différentes entités du groupe Generali en France.

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