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22/01/2009

Europe - CESR poursuit ses travaux sur les ventes à découvert

Le Comité européen des régulateurs de marchés vient d"assigner deux missions au groupe de travail sur les ventes à découvert. D"une part, l"analyse de l"impact des mesures temporaires introduites par les membres du CESR. D"autre part, la mise au point d"une batterie d"options, en tenant compte des contributions du marché, pour promouvoir une plus grande convergence dans le domaine des ventes à découvert. Sur le premier point, les mesures temporaires, le groupe de travail devrait remettre ses conclusions dans le courant du mois de mars.
22/01/2009

UE - Madoff : Bruxelles publiera une directive sur les titres cette année

Selon Les Echos, le commissaire européen au Marché intérieur, Charlie McCreevy, s’est engagé mardi "à gommer les possibilités d’interprétation de la directive OPCVM». Il a par ailleurs annoncé la mise en chantier d’une proposition de directive sur les titres, qui devrait être publiée d’ici à la fin de l’année.
22/01/2009

Suisse - Menace sur le secret bancaire

Selon Le Temps, le gouvernement suisse aurait la possibilité d’accélérer le règlement des poursuites contre UBS, en agissant pour voie d"ordonnance pour autoriser la divulgation d"une liste de 250 noms de clients de la banque que les autorités américaines réclament à la Suisse depuis l"été. Mais l’arme est à double tranchant, souligne le quotidien. Selon l’avocat genevois Carlo Lombardini, une telle mesure serait «certainement envisageable» sur le plan juridique mais ouvrirait du même coup une boîte de Pandore: «Cela reviendrait à expliquer à tout le monde qu’il est possible d’outrepasser les accords de coopération fiscale.»
22/01/2009

UE - Actifs toxiques : Bruxelles pourrait publier des lignes directrices

La Commission pourrait publier prochainement de nouvelles lignes directrices afin d’encadrer les plans mis en oeuvre par les Etats membres pour aider leurs banques à résoudre leurs problèmes d’actifs toxiques. L"objectif est d"éviter de générer des distorsions de concurrence, rapporte Les Echos.
22/01/2009

Luxembourg - CSSF releases list of funds affected by Madoff

In an email message addressed to the Luxembourg investment fund association (ALFI), the Luxembourg financial sector surveillance commission (CSSF) listed 17 Luxembourg-registered collective investment organisms (OPC) which have been affected by the Bernard Madoff fraud case, Les Echos reports. At the top of the list are American sub-funds of the Herald, Luxinvest and Luxalpha funds.
22/01/2009

France - DWS releases Commodity Plus sub-fund

DWS Investments (Deutsche Bank) announced on Tuesday that it has released the Commodity Plus sub-fund of the Luxembourg Sicav DWS Invest (see Newsmanagers of 22 September 2006) in France. The product is a commodities fund which was launched in 2005. Assets currently total EUR123m, while they totalled EUR350m nearly two and a half years ago.Olivier Renard, head of DWS Investments in France, states that the fund is ?one of the rare products available on the French market which offers direct and diversified exposure to commodities with daily net asset value reporting.? The timing is good, he says, since the Commodity Plus offers investors a way to position themselves at the bottom of the cycle, and thus to benefit from a rebound on commodity prices in the long term.
22/01/2009

EU - Toxic assets: Brussels may publish guidelines

The European Commission may soon publish new guidelines for bailout plans put in place by member states to help banks to resolve their problems with toxic assets. The goal of the guidelines would be to avoid creating competitive distortions, Les Echos reports.
22/01/2009

Germany - MLP acquires ZSH

All shareholders in the financial brokerage firm ZSH Have agreed to sell their shares, totalling about EUR11.3m, to MLP. The distributor of financial products will additionally pay up to EUR0.6m, depending on results at ZSH up to 31 March 2009.ZSH has about 80 client advisers and about 50,000 high net worth clients, who include many members of the medical professions.MLP states that the largest shareholders in ZSH were the founder, Wolfgang Zech, and the insurance firms Axa Lebensversicherung and Alte Leipziger Lebensversicherung, who together held 84% of capital in the firm.
22/01/2009

Spain - Santander revises valuation of portfolio for its real estate fund

The Santander Banif Inmobiliaro fund will not be closing, but the value of its portfolio will undergo an extraordinary revision, which will have an impact on its total net asset value, Cinco Días reports. The product is the largest Spanish real estate fund, with 69,000 subscribers and assets currently reported at EUR3.4bn, though this figure will be adjusted to reflect the reality of a market in crisis.
22/01/2009

United States - Heavy losses for two Deutsche Bank hedge funds

The Süddeutsche Zeitung reports that the hedge funds Deutsche Bank CQ Capital and Deutsche Bank Distressed Opportunities, available to high net worth private clients in the United States, have seen respective losses of 47.2% and 42.4% for last year (while the HFRX hedge fund index shows an average loss of 23.3% for last year). Minimal subscription for this type of fund is USD250,000. All hedge funds from Deutsche Bank on sale in the United States put together represent assets of about USD8bn.
22/01/2009

United States - CalPERS changes top management

The California public employees’ retirement system (CalPERS, USD178bn in assets) has a new CEO as of 12 January, in the person of Anne Stausboll. She replaces Ken Marzion, who served in the position in the interim since the departure of Fred Buenostro in June. Stausboll began at CalPERS as chief investment operating officer, then in April 2008 became interim CIO, after the departure of Russell Reed. She was previously chief deputy treasurer of the State of California.Meanwhile, CalPERS has announced the arrival in March of Joseph A. Dear, executive director of the Washington State Investment Board (WSIB) and chairman of the Council of Institutional Investors, as CIO. He will supervise 220 investment professionals.
22/01/2009

Germany - Barbara Knoflach joins board at BVI

Barbara A. Knoflach, chairwoman of the board at SEB Asset Management AG and a member of the board of directors at SEB Invstment GmbH, has been elected as a board member of the German BVI association of management firms.The BVI association on Thursday announced that Knoflach will finish out the term of Heiko Bech, until autumn 2011. Beck left the board of directors at Commerz Real Investmentgesellschaft to take up a new position in the retail and professional banking division at Commerzbank.
22/01/2009

United States - Moody's downgrades State Street

Moody’s Investors Service has lowered its senior non-guaranteed rating for State Street Corp to A1 from Aa3, and maintained a negative outlook on the rating. Standard & Poor’s lowered its rating of the firm the previous day, the Wall Street Journal reports. The move is due to an increase in latent capital losses present in the State Street portfolio, as well as portfolios that the group manages for clients. On Wednesday, shares in State Street gained 15% on rumours of a potential merger, to USD17.07, after falling 59% in trading on Tuesday.
22/01/2009

Germany - TMW Pramerica keeps Weltfonds closed to redemptions

The Munich-based management firm TMW Pramerica Property Investment has announced that it will not be able to reopen its open-ended real estate fund TWM Immobilieon Weltfonds to redemptions at this time. The closure of the fund took place on 28 October 2008. To keep up with redemption demands, the fund (EUR1bn as of the end of October) will be obliged to sell assets. In order not to sell its properties below their value, the manager has extended its redemption suspension until the end of October 2009, while it retains the option to extend the measure for a further year after that. TMW Pramerica has, however, decided to recommence payment of dividends to retirement plans, but will pay these out of its own capital, and not out of the fund’s assets, in order to comply with a directive from the German financial surveillance authority (BaFin).
22/01/2009

United States - SEC accuses manager of USD300m fraud

The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Arthur Nadel, a hedge fund manager who has gone missing, of inflating the value of investments in six funds he advised by USD300m, the Financial Times reports. The real value of the assets is only USD506,000.
22/01/2009

United States - Andrew S. Doman becomes CEO of Russell Investments

Russell Investments has announced that Andrew S. Doman has been appointed CEO and member of the board, effective 2 February. He will replace John Schlifske, who is president and CEO, and who will be returning to his position as executive vice president at Northwestern Mutual, the parent company of Russell, after serving in the interim as head of the management firm (USD150bn in assets as of the end of December), following the departure of Craig Ueland.Andrew S. Doman was most recently CFO for European asset management activities at McKinsey in the United Kingdom.
22/01/2009

United Kingdom - RAB appoints new CIO

RAB Capital is making changes to its management, after announcing a decline of 74% in its assets in annual terms, to USD1.9bn as of the end of December, the Financial Times reports. Charles Kirwan-Taylor, formerly a member of the board of directors in charge of marketing, becomes CIO, replacing Philip Richards, who takes over as manager of the Special Situations and Global Mining funds.
22/01/2009

Germany - Redemption freeze does not cause tensions

Three open-ended real estate funds (CS Euroreal, Morgan Stanley P2 Value and TMW Immobilien Weltfonds) have already announced that they will be extending suspensions on redemptions for up to nine months, but the move is not triggering a crisis of confidence, the Frankfurter Allgemenine Zeitung reports. In the next few days, decisions are expected from DEGI (Aberdeen), SEB Immobilien and KanAm, but financial sector observers are predicting that redemption freezes will be kept in place. The funds which have remained open, at Deutsche Bank, Deka, Union and Commerz Real, are showing total liquidity ratios of 15% to 31%, while the legal minimum is 5%.
22/01/2009

France - Fitch discontinues ratings of UFG Alteram

On Wednesday, Fitch Ratings confirmed its Fund of Hedge Fund Manager rating of two minus (FoHM2-) for UFG Alteram, covering the firm’s alternative multi-management activities, and then withdrew the rating. The agency will no longer provide ratings or analytical coverage of alternative multi-management activities at the firm.Fitch lowered its rating of UFG Alteram to FoHFM2- on 17 December 2008. ?The decision reflected changes which had taken place within the management team at UFG Alteram, with the retirement of the CIO at the beginning of 2008, followed by the departure in October 2008 of the director of fund selection. The lowering of the rating also took into account increasing pressure on the profitability of the management firm, as its assets under management had declined heavily in 2008, largely due to the withdrawal of investors from its dynamic money market funds,? the agency says.?The rating continued, however, to reflect the firm’s rigorous and disciplined fund selection and portfolio management processes, operated by well-defined committees. It also represented the complete and detailed legal and operational due diligence provided by a team operating independently of management, as well as the quality of the IT platform for adoption of positions, order management, and front office operations. The support of the Crédit Mutuel Nord Europe group, the largest shareholder in the management firm, was also taken into consideration in the rating,? the agency continues.
22/01/2009

France - FRR selects BGI

The French national pension reserve fund, the Fonds de Réserve pour les Retraites (FRR), has selected Barclays Global Investors Limited to manage an equities portfolio of Euro zone large and midcaps (passive management based on an index weighted for fundamental factors). The mandate is for a four-year period, renewable for one year, and the indicative size of the allocation is EUR1bn.The selection follows the launch by the FRR on 16 April 2008 of a restricted RFP which proceeded in three rounds, to renew a portion of its mandates invested in European equities. The selection process will continue with the second round (European small caps - active management).
22/01/2009

World - Institutional investor morale rebounds, according to State Street

As a Merrill Lynch survey has also found, institutional investors are regaining some of their calm, according to the State Street Global Markets confidence index, which has risen 12.1 points in January to 60.3, from a corrected level of 48.2 in December (up from the previously announced 48). The overall rise was largely the result of a rise of 21.2 points in the confidence index for North American institutional investors, after a record fall in December from 51.8 to 30.6 points (in corrected figures). The confidence of European investors has improved by 6.7 points, to 73.0. In Asia, confidence has dipped slightly, bringing the index from 86.6 to 86.3 points.Ken Froot, the Harvard University professor who developed the index with State Street Associates, says the rise in the global index for January is the largest increase since August 2007, which is not very surprising after its record decline in December. Although institutional investors in fourth quarter 2008 never showed as high an interest in high risk assets as they now do, Froot warns that it remains to be seen whether these reallocations are motivated by long-term convictions about the value of these assets.
22/01/2009

United States - Operating profit up at BlackRock

Net profit at BlackRock fell last year by 21% compared with 2007, to USD419m, or USD5.91 per share, on revenues up 5% to USD5.06bn. However, operating profit increased 23%, or 9.5% after adjustments, to USD1.59bn. Financial losses are due to co-investments with clients and seed capital for new products. Net profit in fourth quarter fell to USD53m from USD322.44m in the corresponding period of last year.As of 31 December, assets totalled USD1.30715trn, compared with USD1.2586trn at the end of September, and USD1.35664trn twelve months previously. Net subscriptions totalled USD167.6bn for the year as a whole, and USD129.06bn in fourth quarter. However, market and currency effects were negative to the tune of USD188.95bn and USD28.15bn, respectively, of which USD64.54bn and USD15.97bn in the fourth quarter.
22/01/2009

Germany - Assets at Deutsche Bank down 6%

At the end of September, Deutsche Asset Management (DeAM) had assets of EUR510bn, compared with EUR561bn one year previously, the Börsen-Zeitung reports. Assets at DB Advisors (institutional management) remained unchanged at EUR156bn (they totalled EUR156bn at the end of November), while assets at Deutsche Insurance Asset Management totalled EUR102bn, compared with EUR106bn. In alternative management, assets at RREEF were down to EUR58bn from EUR61bn. The heaviest contraction is due to DWS (retail products), where assets declined to EUR193bn from EUR239bn.
22/01/2009

United States - BNY cuts back number of funds

BNY Mellon will reduce its range of funds, Ignites Europe reports. A spokesperson for the management firm states that the rationalisation will affect its range of international funds, particularly products with less than EUR10m in assets.
22/01/2009

Europe - First ray of hope for fund sector

According to Lipper FMI, asset management firms in Europe have posted net subscriptions of EUR10.5bn, after redemptions of EUR153bn in October, in the wake of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, Handelsblatt reports. The situation remains critical due to the potential for more bad news due to the Madoff scandal, says Diana Mackay, director of Lipper FMI. The trend reversal in November is largely attributable to money market funds, which brought in a net total of EUR32bn, after registering net outflows of EUR40bn in October. Redemptions fell significantly for bond funds, while equities funds posted slight net subscriptions.
22/01/2009

France - CAAM and SGAM consider alliance

According to Les Echos, sources at Crédit Agricole and Société Générale confirm the existence of discussions between the two banks of a potential alliance in asset management, as reported on Tuesday by La Tribune. Crédit Agricole Asset Management (CAAM) and Société Générale Asset Management (SGAM) could form a single joint venture under the plans. The combination of the two entities could resemble the merger of their brokerage activities, Calyon Financial (Crédit Agricole) and Fimat (Société Générale), the newspaper observes.
22/01/2009

EU - Madoff: EU to publish securities directive this year

Les Echos reports that the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Charlie McCreevy, on Tuesday pledged to ?nail down the potential interpretations of the UCITS directive.? He also announced that a proposed securities directive is being drafted, which will be unveiled by the end of the year.
22/01/2009

United States - Madoff: irregularities could easily have been detected

According to a study published recently by Riskdata, cited by the Financial Times, returns for the hedge fund managed by Bernard Madoff should have raised questions due to the ?bias ratio,? a mathematical measurement which identifies irregularities in the distribution of a series of returns. The study also claims that the comparison of Madoff’s risk profile with those of his counterparts should have shown that the management style he claimed to follow was not the same as what he practiced.
22/01/2009

World - Assets in hedge funds contract by one quarter in half a year

AGEFI Switzerland reports that, according to Hedge Fund Research (HFR), assets under management at hedge funds declined by USD315bn, of which USD152bn was due to net redemptions, in October-December. At the end of 2008, assets had thus fallen to USD1.4trn, from USD1.93trn six months earlier, a decline of one quarter.According to HedgeFund.net, the contraction was as much as 36%, bringing assets to USD1.84trn. In fourth quarter, net redemptions and fund closures represented USD471bn, compared with only USD185bn of capital losses due to negative market effects.
22/01/2009

Belgique - Perte prévisionnelle de ? 2,5 milliards pour KBC en 2008

Jeudi, KBC indique avoir entièrement liquidé la valeur des CDO (mezzanine) dans lesquelles il avait investi (ne retenant plus que les tranches super-senior). L'établissement estime actuellement que sa perte pour 2008 s’est montée à environ 2,5 milliards d’euros et que, abstraction faite de l’impact exceptionnel de la crise financière, le bénéfice sous-jacent s’inscrit à 2,2 milliards d’euros environ sur l’ensemble de l’exercice.KBC fait aussi état de 2.6 milliards d’euros en net de réductions de valeur sur investissements, dont 1,7 milliard sur le portefeuille de crédits structurés, 700 millions sur le portefeuille d’investissement, principalement dans le pôle assurance, par suite de l'érosion de quelque 20% du cours des actions au cours du 4e trimestre et enfin 200 millions imputables à la liquidation de l’exposition aux banques islandaises. En outre, la base du capital sera encore renforcée par une émission de capital de base non dilutive d’un montant de 2 milliards d’euros entièrement souscrite par le gouvernement flamand, avec une possibilité d’injection supplémentaire de capital de base de 1,5 milliard d’euros.

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