Vendredi soir, la Deutsche Börse a publié les nouvelles dispositions applicable pour le remplacement des titres du Dax qui auraient été radiés selon la procédure d’urgence. Cette règle du «fast exit» demeure inchangée et prévoit qu’un titre ne peut être maintenu dans l’indice s’il tombe plus bas que le 45ème rang des sociétés cotées soit par le volume de transaction soit par la capitalisation boursière. En revanche, il est désormais prévu que la valeur de remplacement doit se classe au pire 35ème en matière de capitalisation boursière et en 45ème position pour le volume de transactions.Cette nouvelle disposition entre en vigueur à compter de ce lundi 26 janvier 2009.

La CNMV a notifié aux sociétés de gestion la conduite à tenir si la note du garant d’un fonds garanti vient à être abaissée, rapporte FundsPeople, relayé par Expansión. Dans ce cas, le gestionnaire doit avertir le régulateur au moyen d’un communiqué boursier puis informer les souscripteurs dès la prochaine communication qui leur est adressée. La CNMV indique avoir détecté que plusieurs instituts de crédit garants de fonds d’investissement affichent à présent une notation inférieure à celle qui était exigée au moment de l’octroi de la garantie.

Moins d"un an après l"obtention d"une licence bancaire pour sa succursale de LGT Bank (Suisse) à Genève, la direction de cette entité change. Selon Le Temps, Joël Rochat a remis sa démission fin décembre. Le groupe bancaire basé à Vaduz, et qui affichait 102,8 milliards de francs sous gestion fin 2007, a seulement confirmé son départ, et indiqué son remplacement par Eric Schneuwly, jusqu"ici responsable opérationnel à Genève. La succursale genevoise gérerait près de 1 milliard de francs pour de la clientèle offshore, selon le quotidien.

Cholet Dupont AM has announced the recruitment, at the end of 2008, of Philippe Lesueur, equities manager, a graduate of EDHEC and CFAF. He was previously at PIM Gestion. At Cholet Dupont AM, Lesueur currently manages the French equities fund CD France Expertise and the European equities fund CD Europe Expertise.

Fitch Ratings on Friday affirmed KBC Asset Management’s M2 asset manager rating for its investment management activities in Brussels and Luxembourg. The agency points out mainly the stability of its investment management staff following a CEO change in July 2008. The rating also recognises the controlled evolution of the company into the institutional business and its overseas growth, particularly in Asia.

La Tribune reports that in Europe, ?the LBO (leveraged buyout) market is in free-fall,? particularly in Great Britain (-93% between third and fourth quarters of 2008), according to statistics from Candover Capital. However, in China, ?LBO funds’ activities leapt by nearly 50% last year,? the newspaper reports.

Walter Berchtold, head of private banking activities, has told the NZZ am Sonntag that Credit Suisse has bought up nearly CHF100m worth of financial products from Lehman Brothers from approximately 2,000 clients. Only 11 clients declined the buyback offer, which was limited to guaranteed-capital Lehman products sold by Credit Suisse to clients who had invested more than half of their capital and less than CHF500,000 in the funds.

After a week of flying rumours, Crédit Agricole S.A. and Société Générale confirmed on Monday morning that they have signed a preliminary agreement to merge their asset management activities.The merger will affect 100% of activities of the Crédit Agricole Asset Management group, including CPR AM and Casam, and the Europan and Asian asset manaagement activities of Société Générale, as well as 20% of TCW, the asset management affiliate in the United States (which is aiming for an IPO in five years). SGAM AI< which will be merged with Lyxor, is excluded from the perimeter of the agreement.The new French actor in asset management will be 70% owned by Crédit Agricole S.A and 30% by Société Générale, and as of 30 September 2008, represents EUR638bn in assets under management, of which EUR460bn come from CAAM and EUR178bn from Société Générale Asset Management. The entity will claim ?fourth place in Europe and ninth place worldwide? by asset volume, a statement adds. It generates more than EUR1.8bn in banking proceeds, and EUR0.9bn in gross operating results.In terms of governance, the new group will be led by Yves Perrier as CEO; Perrier is currently president and CEO of CAAM. Société Générale will have one third of the seats on the board of directors of the new ensemble. Crédit Agricole will appoint the chairman of the board of directors, while Société Générale will appoint the vice-chairman. A press conference will be held in Paris on Monday morning to announce the agreement.

Van Eck Global (USD8.2bn in assets at the end of December, of which USD4.5bn are in ETFs of the Markets Vector range) has announced the launch on the NYSE Arca platform of what it claims is the first US ETF to be based on the Indonesian market as its underlying. The Market Vectors Indonesia Index ETF (acronym: IDX) will be based on the Market Vectors Indonesia Index (acronym: MVINDO), from Germany’s 4asset-management, calculated by S&P. Fees for the fund total 0.71%.As of 31 December, the benchmark index included shares in 25 companies, of which 30.1% were financials, 15.7%, energy sector, and 12.7% telecommunications. The three largest positions as of this date were Bank Central Asia (8.8%), Telekommunikasi Indonesia (7.5%), and Bank Rakyat Indonesia (7.0%).

Ignites Europe reports that Al.ain Leclair, chairman of the French wealth management association (AFG), on Wednesday met with Jean-Pierre Jouyet, the new chairman of the French financial regulator, the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), to ask him to convene a summit of European regulators to put pressure on UBS and HSBC to reimburse investors who have fallen victim to the Madoff fraud. Colette Neuville was also present at the meeting.

Schelcher Prince Gestion, a management firm specialised in fixed income, is joining a trend with its launch of a fund with a fixed maturity date, entitled Schelcher Prince Horizon 2012. The FCP fund will be invested in corporate or convertible bonds of the fixed income type, in the Euro zone, whose maturity may not exceed 31 march 2012. A minimum of 80% of the assets will be investment-grade or better.The attraction of the fund is to ?take advantage of current spreads, which offer very high returns with good quality signatories,? explains Bruno Promonet, deputy CEO of Schelcher Prince. Its objective is to outperform the BTAN, 3.75 January 2012 by at least 3% at maturity. ?A net asset value of more than 120% may be achieved at maturity in conditions identical to the current situation,? says Promonet.

La Tribune reports that falling markets are having an impact on the structure of commissions in alternative management. A study by Bfinance, covering 28 managers of hedge funds and funds of hedge funds in 10 countries, finds a falling trend in management fees. ?Fixed commissions for funds of hedge funds may fall by 17%, and would come out between 90 and 100 basis points,? says Muriel Nahmais, director of research at Bfinance. ?At the same time, performance commissions at hedge funds would fall 25% to a level of about 10%-15%.?

Henderson Group on Sunday confirmed that it is in negotiations with New Star Asset Management over a possible takeover, the Financial Times reports. The British management firm also announced that it would recommend a dividend of 6.1 pence for 2008, the same level as in 2007.

According to a study by Santander Asset Management, assets in SRI funds in Spain fell to EUR883.04m at the end of December, compared with EUR1.16497bn twelve months earlier, a decline of 24.3%, Cinco Días reports. The leader remains BBVA by far, with EUR717.74m, ahead of Santander (EUR90.57m) and La Caixa (EUR13.24m).

Deutsche Bank, promoter of the fund, claims that the DB Platinum Commodity Harvest Fund, which has been granted sales licenses in Luxembourg, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Spain, is the first market neutral commodities fund to comply with the UCITS III directive, HedgeWeek reports. The absolute performance fund replicates the evolution of the Deutsche Bank Commodity Harvest Index, launched in 2007.The strategy is applied to 21 commodities which offer good liquidity in the energy, metals, and agricultural sectors, with a long and a short position on each of the underlying commodities. The objective is to buy contracts at a low price, and to sell them at higher prices.

Confronted with falling asset levels, United States-based management firms are reducing their costs, and layoffs will primarily affect management, according to a new study from Greenwich Associates, covering entities which manage total assets of USD3.2trn. These firms are looking to trim back their budgets by an average of 22% in 2009, compared with 2008. Overall, for the management sector as a whole, cost reductions between 2008 and 2009 are projected to come out at 14%. This remains generally lower than the expected decline in revenues. After an average decrease in assets of 31% in 2008, management firms are preparing for an average decrease in revenues of 33% compared with their 2007 levels at the end of 2009. The managers expecting to be most severely affected are predicting a fall of 43% in 2009 revenues compared with 2007.Greenwich explains that most management firms, rather than reducing their costs proportionally to the decline in revenues, will seek to position themselves for the moment when the markets begin to rebound. They will thus lay off fewer employees in the areas of client and investor services, according to Goran Hagegard, a consultant at Greenwich Associates. This will result in lower profit margins in the short term: in 2009, margins will fall 37% compared with 2007.Most managers are cutting positions in all areas that do not affect management. About three quarters of firms reducing costs are targeting support services and/or investment operations, and about two third are aiming at distribution and client services and/or IT. ?More than half of firms say that executive management is in the firing line, and this category may even see some of the most significant cuts,? says the consultant Chris Nickle. ?More than 30% of firms seeking to reduce spending on executive management claim they are aiming to cut costs by 15% or more, and 17% say they will reduce them by 30% or more.? This will primarily involve cuts in bonuses of 29% on average between 2007 and 2008. In addition, about half of the management firms surveyed say they are cutting personnel. Those which have done or which are planning to do so are planning to reduce staff by an average of about 11%.

According to calculations by Pensions & Investments, assets in the 1,000 largest retirement funds in the United States contracted by USD754bn or 11.8% in fourth quarter, which brings the total decline to USD1.7trn in the fifteen months to the end of December, Pensions & Investments reports. As of 30 September, total assets had fallen by USD965bn or 13.1% over twelve months, to a total of USD6.4trn, while assets under management in the 200 largest retirement savings plans were down 15.9% to USD4.7trn.

Funds People announces that Gonzalo Lardiés star manager at the Banque Privée Edmond de Rothschild, after an equally celebrated career at Metagestión, on 1 February will be joining Interdin Gestión, which is 70% owned by the Banca Privada de Andorra, and which on this date will become known as BPA AM. At that time, the fund managed by Lardiés, the BPERE Fondo Ibérico Acciones, will be renamed as the BPA Fondo Ibérico Acciones. BPERE was already involved in the management of the Interdin product under an outsourcing contract.

The German BVI association of management firms announced on Friday that savings plans in the form of shares in open-ended real estate funds in the ten years to the end of December posted an average performance of 2.8% per year, as did bond funds in Euros, while global bond funds posted gains of 0.7%, and diversified funds invested in Germany produced minimal gains of 0.1%.Due to a collapse in asset levels between 2000 and 2003 more than to the current financial crisis, German equities funds posted an aveage loss of 9.7%, compared with 8.1% for global equities funds and 8% for European equities funds. Geman equities funds only generated performance higher than that of all other categories over 30 years, with an average of 6.4%, putting them just ahead of German diversified funds, with 6.2%.

In 2008, Santander registered a decline in its assets of EUR18bn, to EUR32.95bn. Of this total, however, Expansión reports that about EUR7bn in redemptions were reinvested in deposits at the banking network, while EUR3bn were reinvested in insurance policies from the group.

On Friday morning, KanAm Grund announced that it will be extending the redemption freeze on its two open-ended real estate funds, grundinvest and US-grundinvest, for nine months. The Munich-based management firm states that it is planning to reopen the two funds to redemptions before the end of October.DEGI (Aberdeen Property Investors) has chosen to reopen its real estate fund DEGI International to redemptions from 30 January 2009, ending a freeze which had been in place since the end of October 2008. The product has since registered net subscriptions of EUR65m from retail investors. The liquidity reserves at the fund will measure about 25% at the time of its reopening. The occupancy rate for properties in the fund’s portfolio is 98%. However, DEGI (EUR6bn in assets) is extending the freeze on redemptions for its other open-ended real estate fund, DEGI Europa, for a further nine months, as this fund has not managed to amass a sufficient level of liquidities.KanAm and DEGI initially suspended redemptions from the funds at the end of October, along with ten other management firms. In the past week, it has been announced that redemptions are also frozen for a further nine months from the CS Euroreal, TMW Pramerica Weltfonds, Mrogan Stanley P2 Value, Axa Immoselect and SEB ImmoInvest funds.Legally, the management firms would be allowed to extend these freezes on redemptions once more, for a further twelve months. At the end of this period, they would have to liquidate the fund and reimburse investors.

Although their assets last year fell to CHF248.71bn from CHF282.96bn at the end of 2007, Swiss-registered funds posted net subscriptions of CHF26.62bn, while Luxembourg-registered funds saw net redemptions of CHF46.76bn, AGEFI Switzerland reports. Otto Kober, head of research in Switzerland for Lipper, says that so far, there have been very few redemptions of shares in equities funds (CHF3.52bn in 2008).

At the end of December, assets at the alternative management firm Partners Group came out at CHF24.4bn, the same level as one year previously. In the event, net subscriptions of CHF6.2bn balanced out the negative impact of the rising Swiss Franc against the Euro and the US dollar (CHF1.1bn in the month of December alone), and negative market effects. Assets under management as of 31 December were about CHF1bn lower than the projections announced by the alternative management firm in November 2008.Of total assets as of the end of last year, assets in private equity represented CHF19.2bn, compared with CHF16.7bn twelve months earlier, while real estate totalled CHF0.5bn, compared with CHF0.3bn. Meanwhile, the private infrastructure allocation represented CHF0.3bn, while CHF1.8bn were allocated to absolute performance strategies, publicly traded alternative products, and the wealth management division.For the end of 2009, Partners Group projects assets of CHF26-29bn.

Following the resignation of John Thain, Brian Moynihan was appointed on Friday as president of global banking and global wealth and investment management at Bank of America. Moynihan will retain his position as general counsel for the bank, until a replacement can be found for him in that position. He was previously president of global wealth and investment management at Bank of America, before it was acquired last year by Merrill Lynch.Meanwhile, Bank of America has announced that Tom Montag will remain as director of the global markets unit, but that he will now report directly to Ken Lewis, chairman and CEO. He is also appointed as a member of the management executive team, which determines the group’s strategy.

On Friday, the Swiss federal financial market surveillance authority (FINMA) announced, with many precautions, that side pockets may be approved, under certain circumstances, for Swiss funds of hedge funds (FoHF). The creation of side pockets may not be undertaken without the prior approval of FINMA, and must be in the interests of all investors. The rights of investors must also be preserved at the creation of the side pockets, the regulator emphasizes.

In a statement dated 23 January, the Luxembourg financial sector surveillance commission (Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier, or CSSF) provided a list of 17 collective investment organisms (OPC) registered in Luxembourg (and for each one of these funds, where applicable, the sub-funds affected), which have been directly or indirectly affected by the fraud case related to Bernard L. Madoff. The funds on the list have decided to suspend either calculations of their net asset value, redemptions, subscriptions, or conversions of their shares/equities. The OPCs have a total exposure of EUR1.7bn to the fraud. They include the Herald (Lux), for the US Absolute Return Fund sub-fund; the Luxembourg Investment Fund, for the US Equity Plus sub-fund; the Luxalpha Sicav, for the Balanced Sub-fund, Growth Sub-fund and X-tra Alternative Investments Sub-fund; the Carat (Lux) Sicav, for the Global One sub-fund; the LRI Invest Alpha Stable Euro; the BG Umbrella Fund for the BG Global Classic, BG Global Dynamic, BG Global Challenge, BG Global Balance, BG Global Discovery and BG Stable Value sub-funds; the MARS Fund for the One © sub-fund; and Pareturn for the Best Selection sub-fund.

The Austrian association of pension funds (FVPK) on Friday estimated that its 19 member entities showed average losses fo 13.1% in 2008, while their performance over five years stands at 2.62% per year, compared with 6.8% for the five years to the end of 2007. The 19 pension funds managed EUR11.5bn in assets as of the end of December, compared with EUR13.1bn twelve months previously.

BarclayHedge reports that hedge funds lot an average of 24.4% last year, and 70% of them finished the year in the red, Sol Waksman, chairman and founder of BarclayHedge, told HedgeWeek. Funds of funds lost an average of only 21.69%, but 85% of them had negative performance.The only strategy to have made money for last year as a whole was equity short bias, with 41.09% performance, and gains of 20.83% as equity markets fell in September and October.

The Austrian alternative management firm Salus Alpha on Friday received authorisation to release its Directional Markets hedge fund to retail investors in Germany. The fund was previously available only in the form of a managed account, with a minimal subscription of EUR10m. The fund replicates the DMX index, which posted performance as of the end of 2008 of 59.27%, which, according to Fondsprofessionell, represents a 99.64% outperformance of the Dax, and 97.76% outperformance of the S&P 500.

According to Absolut report, German single hedge funds posted an average performance in December of 2.65%, compared with 2.69% in November. The Einzelfonds-DH X index (1,045.51 at the end of December) finished 2008 with losses of only 0.95% while losses for the Euro-denominated versions of the Credit Suisse/Tremont Blue Chip Hedge Fund and HFRX Global Hedge Fund were 26.8% and 23.77%, respectively.The German fund of hedge fund index (Dachfonds-DH X, 925.14 as of the end of December), for its part, is down 1.06% in December, compared with 2.25% in the previous month. For the year, the index has lost 12.19%, while the HFRI Fund of Funds Composite Index was down only 0.9% for December, but lost 20.68% for the year.