According to statistics published on Friday by the BVI association of management firms, German equities funds posted returns of only 22.6% in the first nine months of the year, which is 4.6 points higher than the Dax. However, over one year, these funds show gains of only 0.3%, as they had suffered losses over 12 months to 31 March of 40.31%, and losses of 26.6% to 30 June. Over 30 years, average annual performance comes to 8.2%. The best results for the 12 months to 30 September has been for corporate bond funds, at 9.3%, while real estate funds and money market funds generated returns of 2.7% and 1.2%.
Veteran German deep value manager Hans-Peter Schupp has now launched his flagship fund Fidecum SICAV - Contrarian Value Euroland in Austria, says Citywire. The fund was originally registered in Germany and Luxembourg.
The Chinese-British HSBC group is about to launch the Ucits AvantEdge fund of funds, which will be available to retail and institutional investors seeking absolute return investment opportunities, Hedge Week reports. The launch is planned for late November, and the fund of funds will include only blue chip stocks with a solid track record and robust infrastructure.
On Friday, the Cosmen family and the private equity investor CVC Partners have announced in a market statement that they have withdrawn their GBP765m bid to take over National Express. The Cosmen family owns 18.5% of the British firm.
New Star’s flagship retail property vehicle (now owned by Henderson Global Investors) has begun to look for new investments for the first time since 2007, marking the return of retail investors to the commercial real estate sector. At its peak, the fund was larger than GBP2bn, and this has been reduced to just GBP650m through the combination of asset falls and selling of its units. But the fund is now taking in between GBP20,000 to GBP50,000 every day on an overall net basis, giving it cash to invest again.
Raj Rajaratnam, the manager of the Galleon hedge fund, has been arrested, along with two directors of the New Castly hedge fund, Danielle Chiesi and Mark Kurland, the director of the treasury at Intel Capital, Rajiv Goel, and Anil Kumar, a director at McKinsey & Co and a head of IT at IBM. They are accused of insider trading on shares in Google, IBM and AMD, Die Welt reports. The only operation involving Google brought more than USD20m in gains for the investors, of which Rajaratnam made USD8m. The court has set Rajaratnam’s bail at USD100m.
More than 20% of hedge funds tent to distort important information supplied to investors about funds and their performance, according to Hedge Week, citing a study by Stephen Brown, professor of finance at NYU Stern. 28% of the sample of funds in the study (444 hedge funds and their due diligence reports) offer incorrect or unverifiable reports to their assets under management and returns, while 9% claimed not to face any legal or regulatory difficulties, at times when they were actually facing problems of this kind. Only 6% of the sample admitted to difficulties of this kind. “This study clearly shows that some funds are very reticent in their relations with their own clients and potential investors. This information deficit, this lack of transparency right across the industry, represents a real problem,”says Brown.
Les Echos reports that in a draft communication to be passed this week, the EU government is planning to subject clearing houses, which the major market actors have agreed to set up, to a European system of supervision, which the Union is in the process of creating following the recommendations of the Larosière report. The EU is proposing to be in full supervision of their activities by mid-2010. They will be required to obtain licenses from a future European market authority to conduct business in the European Union. They will then be supervised, with the support of the European body, by national regulatory authorities. To incite banks to use centralised clearing houses, the Commission will require that clearing pass through such chambers for standardised derivatives. Owners’ equity requirements will also be raised for operations which will continue to be cleared on a bilateral basis.
Since the onset of the financial crisis, the major families and sovereign funds of the Middle East have cut back their investments and required more attractive terms from private equity funds. David Rubenstein, CEO of Carlyle group, has told the Financial Times that the time when big investors received the same treatment as other subscribers is passing. Emirates Industrance Company is planning to gradually reduce its exposure to private equity funds, while Omar Lodhi, director of investor relations at the private equity firm Abraaj Capital, estimates that it is still possible to raise capital locally, but that funds in the process of being created will probably not achieve initial targets of USD4bn, both because the target assets are less expensive and because investors have become more cautious.
In reaction to the imminent absorption into Cintra into its parent company, Ferrovial, the British pension fund Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) has liquidated its stake of about 25 (about EUR95m) in the infrastructure firm, Cinco Días reports. With the Australian funds CP2 and Magellan, as well as the New Jersey Division of Investment, USS made the decision to divest as it considered the group too exposed to the construction sector, and because it was not pleased that the terms of the deal had been disclosed to the press. USS, which also holds stakes in the capital of BBVA and Telefónica, ultimately preferred to withdraw its investment.
UBS has issued a warning to those of its US clients in danger of figuring in a list of 4,450 cases which the bank will be required to hand over to the US tax authorities, in a registered letter which is clearly marked with the name of the sender. As the US postal service is a government entity, the IRS will have no difficulty in obtaining the names of these parties without waiting for official disclosure, the weekly newsmagazine Sonntag reports. The lawyer for several of these clients, Andreas Rüd, estimates that UBS acted deliberately, and is planning to file suit against the Swiss bank.
Bank of America (BoA) has posted a net loss of USD1bn for third quarter, Agefi reports, compared with profits of USD1.18bn one year previously. The results come despite the fact that net banking profits increased by 32%, to USD26bn, as a result of the integration of Merrill Lynch and Countrywide. The degradation of BoA’s retail lending and credit card activities are primarily responsible for this counterperformance, although the bank is a leader in these markets in the United States.
Bonuses at asset management firms are likely to be reduced by up to 35%, due to falling assets, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing a study by Russell Reynolds Associates.
One of Canada’s largest independent wealth-management firms, DundeeWealth, is launching its first mutual funds in the U.S. The six new funds are: Dynamic Infrastructure Fund, Dynamic Gold & Precious Metals Fund, Dynamic U.S. Growth Fund, Dynamic Discovery Fund, Dynamic Contrarian Advantage Fund and Dynamic Energy Income Fund.
La banque britannique Lloyds Banking Group et le groupe spécialisé dans la gestion de patrimoine Rathbone Brothers ont annoncé jeudi qu’elles discutaient d’un rachat par la seconde à la première du service de gestion de portefeuille de Bank of Scotland, filiale de Lloyds Banking Group.Les deux banques ont indiqué dans des communiqués séparés à la Bourse de Londres que leurs discussions portaient sur «l’acquisition possible de certains actifs relatifs aux activités de gestion d’investissement de la clientèle privée à l’intérieur de la division Gestion de fortune et International de Lloyds Banking Group», principalement ce service de gestion de portefeuille.
State Street Corporation a annoncé le 15 octobre l’expansion de sa gamme de services à l’attention des hedge funds pour le front, middle, et back office. Cette gamme comprendra désormais des services de conservation de titres, de gestion de trésorerie, et d’opérations de change. L’extension de cette offre résulte de l’intérêt croissant que manifestent les gérants de fonds alternatifs pour réduire leur risque en transférant un plus grand nombre de services vers les conservateurs globaux dans un environnement de marché difficile.Les nouveaux services de State Street pour les hedge funds comprennent également des services de dépôt et de conservation pour la trésorerie, ainsi que le traitement et la garde des valeurs sur plus d’une centaine de marchés à travers le monde. D’autre part, les hedge funds clients de State Street peuvent désormais bénéficier d’un accès simplifié à une gamme de produits tels que des services d’opérations de change, proposés par State Street Global Markets, la division de recherche financière et de courtage du groupe.
BNY Mellon International Operations a nommé Jim McEleney au poste de chief executive, selon Asian Investor. Jim McEleney, qui prend la succession de Sheena Wilson, est responsable du bon fonctionnement de tous les services opérationnels pour l’ensemble des activités internationales de BNY Mellon, entre autres la gestion d’actifs, la gestion de fortune, les marchés financiers et les services de trésorerie.Jim McEleney, qui sera basé à Pune en Inde, va également intégrer le comité opérationnel Asie-Pacifique. Il est directement rattaché à Don Monks, vice-chairman de BNY Mellon et Frank Dittrich, executive vice-president de BNY Mellon.Sheena Wilson va désormais travailler à Londres où elle sera responsable de la gestion des talents au niveau international.
Finalement, l’indice Credit Suisse/Tremont des hedge funds affiche pour septembre une performance de 3,04 % contre 1,53 % en août. Il enregistre ainsi un gain de 7,27 % pour le troisième trimestre, son meilleur résultat depuis douze ans, et une performance de 14,97 % depuis le début de l’année. Ces chiffres sont meilleurs que prévu encore récemment (lire notre dépêche du 9 octobre), puisque CS/Tremont avait estimé sur la base des résultats publiés par 65 % du panel que la performance de septembre était ressortie à 2,67 % et celle des neuf premiers mois à 14,56 %.
HSBC vient de nommer John Flint au poste de responsable du pôle gestion d’actifs au niveau mondial, selon Money Marketing. John Flint prend la succession de Mark McCombe qui rejoint Hong Kong en tant que HSBC Hong Kong. Les deux nominations prendront effet en janvier 2010.John Flint est actuellement le group treasurer de HSBC et deputy head global markets. Il est également responsable global markets pour l’Europe, le Moyen Orient et l’Afrique.
Selon L’Agefi suisse, la Société Bancaire Privée (SBP), propriété depuis l’automne 2007 de la société italienne Banco Profilo, a convoqué une assemblée générale extraordinaire le 3 novembre 2009 à son siège de Genève, afin d’adopter une nouvelle raison sociale. Elle a aussi annoncé jeudi la démission de son président Renzo Cenciarini pour «raisons personnelles». Le conseil d’administration proposera à l’assemblée de nommer Franco Antamoro de Céspedes pour le remplacer.
Au 30 septembre, l’encours de l’allemand SEB Asset Management affichait une augmentation de 1,5 % à 16,6 milliards d’euros, a indiqué jeudi Barbara Knoflach, président du directoire. La progression est attribuable à un effet de marché positif de 626 millions d’euros, qui a été amputé par des remboursements nets de 387 millions d’euros.La gestion actions a bénéficié d’un effet de marché positif qui a permis à son encours de gonfler de 24,2 % et de compenser les remboursements nets de 5,6 % accusés par la gestin obligataire. Pour le multi-classes d’actifs et pour l’immobilier, l’encours a progressé respectivement de 1,6 % et de 1,2 %. L’encours de la gestion immobilières a augmenté de 630 millions d’euros sur les douze derniers mois, à 1,9 milliard d’euros.SEB AM annonce par ailleurs le lancement d’une nouvelle classe de parts pour les investisseurs professionnels à compter du 1er décembre.
Karl Stäcker, président du comité de direction de Frankfurt-Trust, la société de gestion de la BHF-Bank (groupe Sal. Oppenheim) a annoncé que désormais les fonds de la gamme seront répartis en quatre segments que leur dénomination doit rendre plus aisément identifiables pour les investisseurs.La ligne FT Select se compose de briques correspondant aux classes d’actifs monétaire, actions et obligations qui permettent aux souscripteurs de donner à leur portefeuille la structure souhaitée en fonction de leur avis sur l'évolution des marché.La ligne FT Comfort recouvre les fonds de fonds et les fonds diversifiés gérés de manière active, des produits de gestion de fortune appropriés pour une phase de constitution d'épargne.Les deux lignes restantes ne seront disponibles qu’au travers de certaines canaux de distribution. Les fonds FT Exclusiv comporteront les produits gérés pour le compte d’assureurs et d’autres prestataires de services financiers tandis que la ligne FT Partner recouvre les fonds pour lesquels Frankfurt Trust fait office de société d’exécution pour des gestionnaires de fortune extérieurs responsables de la politique d’investissement et du suivi de la clientèle.