Le montant des encours des ETF a franchi la barre des 1.000 milliards de dollars pour la première fois, selon le Financial Times, qui cite l’étude de BlackRock qui doit être publiée mercredi. Fin 2009, ils représentaient 1.032 milliards de dollars, soit 45 % de plus qu’il y a un an.
Selon le Temps, les directeurs de trois banques nationalisées, Royal Bank of Scotland, Northern Rock et Lloyds Banking Group ont dû répondre ce mardi aux 15 députés du comité parlementaire britannique en charge des finances, dans une session ouverte au public. Ils ont notamment dû s’expliquer sur leur salaire et les bonus versés à leurs salariés. Stephen Hester, le directeur général de RBS, a indiqué que sonsalaire, s’il réussit à redresser la banque et à faire remonter le cours de bourse, pourrait atteindre 9,5 millions de livres.
En 2009, les sociétés de capital-investissement opérant en Espagne ont subi une chute de 65 % de leur collecte par rapport à 2008, avec 955 millions d’euros (comme en 2002), dont 67 % sont allés à des opérateurs espagnols, rapporte Cinco Días. Leur volume d’investissement s’est parallèlement contracté de 47 % à 1,62 milliard d’euros et l’investissement moyen par dossier est tombé à 2 millions d’euros contre 3,6 millions en 2008 et 5 millions en 2007 (année où les entrées avaient porté sur 5 milliards d’euros), indique l’Asociación Española de Entidades de Capital Riesgo (Ascri). Les derniers fonds bouclés en Espagne l’ont été par Nazca (116 millions d’euros), Bull net, Hiperion et Nauta tandis que Dinamia et Madrigal ont lancé des augmentations de capital de respectivement 40 millions et 60 millions d’euros.
Lundi, la Deutsche Bank a fait admettre à la cotation sur la Bourse de Singapour (SGX) six ETF supplémentaires de la gamme db x-trackers, ce qui porte à 16 (sur un total d’une cinquantaine) le nombre des produits de cet émetteur.Il s’agit en l’occurrence des fonds Emerging Markets TRN Index ETF, MSCI Brazil TRN Index ETF, MSCI Russia Capped Index ETF, MSCI World TRN Index ETF, MSCI Pacific ex Japan TRN Index ETF et MSCI EM Asia TRN Index, les commissions de gestion s'échelonnant entre 45 et 65 points de base.Ces produits s’adressent prioritairement aux banques privées, aux assureurs et aux fonds souverains asiatiques.
L’intérêt proclamé des hedge funds britanniques pour une installation à Genève peine à se concrétiser. Seuls quelques grands gérants alternatifs londoniens tels que Bluegold, CQS Asset Management et Tiresias Capital ont ouvert une présence physique sur les rives du Léman ces 18 derniers mois, rappelle le Temps. Selon l’Association suisse des fonds, ils seraient entre 10 et 20 hedge funds de toutes origines à s’être installés en Suisse ces 24 derniers mois. Ces sociétés se sont souvent contentées d’ouvrir des antennes avec deux ou trois personnes. Ni Brevan Howard Asset Management ni BlueCrest n’ont ouvert les bureaux annoncés. Ils entendent déplacer à Genève de grosses équipes, jusqu’à 50 personnes, soit 20% de leurs effectifs.
On Monday, Deutsche Bank added six more ETF funds to trading on the Singapore stock exchange (SGX) from the db x-trackers range, bringing the total to 16 (out of a total of some 50 products) from this issuer available on this market. The new funds are the Emerging Markets TRN Index ETF, MSCI Brazil TRN Index ETF, MSCI Russia Capped Index ETF, MSCI World TRN Index ETF, MSCI Pacific ex Japan TRN Index ETF and MSCI EM Asia TRN Index, with management commissions ranging form 45 to 65 basis points. The products are primarily aimed at private banks, insurers, and Asian sovereign wealth funds.
The Munich-based private bank Merck Finck & Co Privatbankiers (KBL group) on Tuesday announced that on 1 January, it sold its affiliate Merck Finck Invest Asset Management GmbH (EUR1.75bn in assets) to the management of the firm. The heads of the new MFI Asset Management are Johann Peter Roßgoderer and Johann Ipfelkofer.The new firm, which has been issued a license by BaFin, will specialise in asset allocation strategies for institutional funds. It will retain its privileged ties with the bank in the areas of wealth management and open-ended funds.
Natixis Asset management has announced the appointment of Aline Flamain as director of customer service in the office of the director of development. In this position, she will be in charge of client reporting, performance attribution and client assistance. Flamain, 38, was previously at Crédit Agricole Asset Management, from 2005, where she was head of the commercial and marketing information system in the customer services department, in charge of Relationship Marketing Consumer areas, asset management, inflows, and product reference.
Crédit Agricole Private Equity has become a signatory of the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UN PRI). By adopting the Principles, the private equity firm pledges to include ESG issues in its investment analysis and decision-making process, to take ESG questions into account in its shareholder policies and practices, to require business in which Crédit Agricole Private Equity invests to publish appropriate information about ESG questions, to foster the acceptance and application of the Principles by asset management actors, to work together to increase the effectiveness of signatories in the application of the Principles, and to individually track activities and progress in the application of the Principles.
Financière de Champlain, a specialist in sustainable development funds, has acquired a 42% stake in the capital of Nef Capital Ethique Management (NCEM), a private equity firm founded in December 2007, through an acquisition of the stake in that firm acquired in 2008 by Sarasin-France, which has been held since 2009 by the UFG group. The investor thus becomes the largest shareholder in NCEM, alongside the Société Financière de la Nef (42%); the remainder is held by Ecofi Investissements (12%) and the management. The change in shareholders was provoked by the arrival of UFG, which is considered a potential competitor to NCEM, in the capital of Sarasin-France. This has not prevented the Banque Sarasin from continuing to produce extra-financial investment analysis of FCPR funds from NCEM. On the contrary, says Jacques Favier, CEO of NCEM: the new configuration will allow the insurer total independence from the Sarasin brand.
The amount of assets held by exchange-traded funds has climbed above USD1,000bn for the first time. The figure at the end of 2009 was USD1,032bn, up 45 per cent from a year earlier, according to a BlackRock report to be released on Wednesday.
Julius Baer has announced the recruitment of Lee Boon Keng as co-director of investment solutions in Asia, and co-CIO for the region. Lee will be based in Hong Kong; he was previously a chief strategist at UBS Wealth Management for Asia, Asian Investor report. A search is underway at UBS to replace him.
Nasdaq OMX on 11 January announced that it has extended its previously-announced agreement with Morningstar in the area of equities research. In June 2009, the exclusive agreement between the two firms included basic research produced by Morningstar on all companies traded on the Nasdaq. Now, it includes deeper analysis of the same companies. Nasdaq OMX says in a statement that research provided by Morningstar in the past few months has been very favourably received by the companies concerned. Morningstar’s product offerings are all the more welcome as coverage in terms of the number of small and mid-sized companies has often been considerably reduced recently if not completely discontinued.
Swiss-based Tiberius Asset Management is this year predicting 20% returns on investments in some commodities, such as corn, due to demand for ethanol, and coffee, due to a shortage of arabica for meteorological reasons, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. Gold will also be a good investment. However, aluminium, zinc, and nickel prices rose too far in 2009, and have not much further room to increase. Equities will not be likely to continue their increases of last year, and the Dax may fall back to 5600 points by the end of the year, from 6000 currently.
A hedge-fund manager known to prosecutors as «Tipper X» in the Galleon Group insider-trading investigation could lead prosecutors to scrutinize hedge funds not previously implicated in the probe, people familiar with the case say. The manager was identified as Thomas Hardin, a trader at Lanexa Global Management. Mr. Hardin is included in a list of individuals that the Securities and Exchange Commission has provided to defense lawyers as potential witnesses.
Galleon hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam, accused of fraud and conspiracy, attacked the U.S. government’s wiretap evidence on Tuesday, says the Financial Times. His lawyer John Dowd said that he would file a motion to suppress telephone recordings used to arrest his client last October. Raj Rajaratnam also won approval to stay free on bail.
The guiding transparency principles initially released in 2005, were in need of a brushing up. Thus, after 18 months of work, the AFG on 12 January unveiled the new version of the principles, now known as the Transparency Code for open-ended SRI funds, designed and approved by the AFG and the FIR (Forum for Responsible Investment). The chairman of the AFG, Pierre-Henri de La Porte du Theil, says that the board of directors of the association has decided to make adherence ot teh code obligatory for all funds bearing the open-ended SRI stamp. For their part, the AFG and FIR will engage to publish a list of funds that have signed up to the code on their websites.
The Metroinvest fund, founded by Metrópolis and clients of the private bank La Caixa, founded one year ago with EUR150m in acapital, is making its first deal in London with the acquisition of a 3,000 square metre office property near Finsbury Square for GBP20.2m, Expansión reports. The vendor is a fund from the German asset management firm IVG. Metroinvest is planning to invest about EUR500m in two years.
In 2009, funds on sale in Sweden posted net subscriptions of SEK135bn (about EUR13.2bn), the Swedish fund association Fondbolagens Förening reports. This is a record annual amount, which is all the more surprising as it comes after a difficult year in 2008, when funds saw outflows of SEK7.8bn. Inflows got a boost from investor interest in equities funds, which alone saw net inflows of SEK112bn. Diversified funds and bond funds received SEK24bn and SEK22bn. However, money market funds saw outflows of SEK23bn, while hedge funds had SEK1bn in outflows. The Swedish association observes that 2009 was also an exceptional year in terms of performance. On average, equities funds earned 38%. In the month of December alone, Swedish funds posted net subscriptions of SEK36.6bn, with SEK28.7bn for equities funds.
Horst Schmidt, chairman of the managing board at the German private bank Delbrück Bethmann Maffei (ABN Amro group), says that net profits in European private banking have fallen to 17 basis points in terms of assets under management, down from 35 basis points previously, due to the crisis. This remains a comfortable figure, but increases the critical size necessary for a private bank to EUR10bn under management, from EUR6-7bn previously, the Börsen-Zeitung reports. Delbrück saw an increase in its assets of EUR2bn in 2009, to EUR13bn. The bank is planning to increase its distribution staff and possibly to make acquisitions.
British hedge funds’ interest for settling in Geneva is slow to materialize. Only a few big London names like Bluegold, CQS Asset Management and Tiresias Capital already have set up a physical presence on the shores of the lake over the last 18 months, Le Temps reports. According to the Swiss Funds Association, some 10 to 20 hedge funds have been settling in Switzerland over the last two years.These FMCs have limited their presence to 2-3 person offices. Neither Brevan Howard Asset Management nor BlueCrest have actually opened the rep offices the had said they would. They plan to move big teams -up to 50 people- to Geneva, which would represent 20% of their present headcount.
The French investment firm Wendel is releasing 25 million shares in Helikos, a “Special Purpose Acquisition Companiy” (SPAC), at EUR10 per share, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. The shares will be available from 2 February. The board of directors, composed of Roland Lienau, Hermann Simon and Jürgen Heraeus, will aim to build up a “hidden champion” war chest of EUR650m-EUR750m, with revenues of more than EUR3bn, which will then immediately be listed through Helikos. The firm should be expected to grow by 10% per year, and be one of the top three actors in its industry.
ETFlab Investment, an affiliate of DekaBank, has added the ETFlab iBoxx € Liquid Germany Covered Diversified, a German-registered index-linked fund (DE000A1A4DP7) which complies with UCITS III and replicates the performance of the Markit iBoxx € Liquid Germany Covered Diversified index, to trading on the XTF segment of the Xetra electronic platform from Deutsche Börse. The fund covers the evolution of the 30 most liquid German Pfandbriefe (jumbo-Pfandbriefe), which have a minimum volume of EUR1bn. The index may include only up to four Pfandbriefe from the same issuer. The product was launched on 16 December 2009, and has assets of EUR30.27m. Management commission is 0.09%. With this new fund, the XTF segment now includes 550 ETFs.
The Chinese asset management firm Guotai has received a USD700m quota from the regulatory authorities as part of the QDII program. Z-Ben Advisors reports that Guotai will be the only major fund management firm which will resist the temptation to launch an ETF based on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) index: instead, its product will be based on the Nasdaq 100. The fund is slated for launch by the end of first half, and will be the first non-Hong Kong based single-country fund to be offered as part of the QDII program. It is likely that UBS SDIC has also received a USD500m quota, but no announcement has yet been made so far. Z-Ben Advisors remarked on Wednesday that nine fund management firms to date have received a total of USD7bn in QDII quotas, but only E-Fund, China Merchants and China Universal also have a license to sell their products, which is the last stage before the effective launch of the funds.
Ignis Asset Management has appointed Chris Fellingham as Chief Investment Officer, Fixed Income. He joins Ignis from George Soros’ London based asset management business where he has been working since 2008. Prior to joining Soros he spent 12 years at Blackrock/Merrill Lynch/Mercury Asset Management.Chris Fellingham will join the Ignis Board and take overall responsibility for the company’s circa GBP50bn of fixed income assets. Peter Reid remains CIO responsible for all other asset classes – circa GBP21 billion of equity, property and alternative assets.
PSigma Investment Management has recruited Tom Becket at chief investment officer (CIO) and Tim Gregory as director of global equities, Money Marketing reports. Becket joined the firm six years ago, and is currently director if investment strategies. PSigma Investment Management manages more than GBP1bn in assets.
La BaFin a accordé son agrément de commercialisation en Allemagne au fonds de hedge funds de droit luxembourgeois Tectum Global Hedge (code Isin : LU0250237731) lancé en avril 2006 par Flossbach & von Storch. Ce produit dont l’encours dépasse les 95 millions d’euros est géré selon une approche multi-stratégies et investit dans une quinzaine de hedge funds, l’objectif étant de générer une performance absolue de 7 à 9 % par an.Les frais de gestion se situent à 0,75 % et FvS facture une commission de performance de 10 %, avec high watermark.
Au 4 janvier, Helaba Invest a lancé le fonds de droit allemand HI-Atlas-Invest, un produit de performance absolue multi-classes d’actifs dont l’objectif est de gérer en permanence un rendement supérieur à celui du monétaire et de limiter le perte en fin d’année à trois points de pourcentage.L'équipe de gestion réplique au moyen de futures très liquides l'évolution de dix marchés d’actions mondiaux et de quatre marchés obligataires mondiaux et peut investir en matières premières ainsi qu’en volatilité.Caractéristiques de HI-Atlas-Invest : Code Isin : DE000A0YCQL7Droit d’entrée : 2 % maximum Frais de gestion: 0,80 %Montant initial de la part : 50 eurosSouscription minimale : 2,5 millions d’euros