Dans une interview au Financial Times, Jamie Dimon, directeur général de JPMorgan, estime que la crise financière et économique aux Etats-Unis va s"aggraver cette année. «Le pire n"est pas encore derrière nous. (?). Dans notre secteur, la situation sur les prêts à la consommation et les cartes de crédit va continuer à empirer». Pour le patron de JPMorgan, le secteur bancaire va revenir aux fondamentaux : servir les individus et les entreprises le mieux possible.

Refusant de rejoindre le ch?ur des Cassandre, Lazard Gestion Frères adopte pour 2009 une position plutôt optimiste. #Nous anticipons un retournement de cycle cette année#, prévoit en effet François-Marc Durand, associé-gérant de Lazard Frères Gestion.Les classes d"actifs à privilégier cette année sont clairement les actifs risqués, comme le crédit bancaire, les actions, les convertibles, les obligations corporate et l"alternatif. #Les actifs risqués sont complètement bradés#, affirme Matthieu Grouès, responsable de la stratégie et de l"allocation d"actifs et directeur des gestions de Lazard Frères Gestion. #Le crédit bancaire européen et les actions pourraient en 2009 offrir des performances pouvant aller jusqu"à 30 %#, anticipe-t-il. #Les valorisations des actions sont à des niveaux extrêmement bas qui ne justifient pas un scénario de dépression, qui nous semble peu probable#, explique Matthieu Grouès, qui rappelle que les PE sont à des niveaux jamais vus depuis la deuxième guerre mondiale. Il favorise particulièrement la zone euro, #bénéficiant d"un important bêta et d"une bonne visibilité# et les actions américaines. Il considère également qu"il faudra revenir sur les actions japonaises à moyen terme. Lazard Frères Gestion évite en revanche d"investir dans les pays émergents. #Il y aura largement assez à gagner sur les pays développés, pas besoin d"aller voir plus loin#, insiste François-Marc Durand. Dans les portefeuilles type, les secteurs surpondérés sont l"industrie, les biens de consommation et la santé. Les matériaux de base sont en revanche toujours souspondérés, tout comme les financières. Si l"optimisme prime, notamment sur les actions, il s"agit de ne pas perde trop de temps, les marchés étant toujours en avance sur la reprise économique. #Le risque, c"est de passer à côté d"une grande partie de la performance en investissant une fois que la reprise est amorcée#, conclut Matthieu Grouès.

Afin de faire revenir les particuliers, Putnam Investments a lancé au 1er janvier quatre mutual funds de performance absolue promettant des rendements supérieurs de 1, 3, 5 et 7 points de pourcentage à celui des Treasury bills mesuré par un indice Merrill Lynch. Le résultat est mesuré sur une période de trois ans, de sorte que la baisse d’une année peut être compensée par la performance d’une autre, souligne The Wall Street Journal. Putnam affichait fin 2008 un encours de 106 milliards de dollars, dont 54 milliards en mutual funds et 52 milliards pour le compte de clients institutionnels.

Dans le sillage de la plupart des places financières, perturbées par les piètres ventes de détail aux USA, Tokyo a cédé 5% le jeudi 15 janvier avec un nikkei en recul de 428,32 points à 8.010,13 points.

Selon Standard & Poor’s, les emissions de sukuks ont plongé l’an dernier de plus de 56 % à 14,9 milliards de dollars. Cette diminution est imputable aux turbulences sur les marchés financiers, au tarissement des liquidités, à l'élargissement des spreads de crédit et à l’attitude attentiste des investisseurs. La taille moyenne des émissions a également diminué fortement, compte tenu de la moindre appétence des investisseurs. Enfin, le dollar américain a perdu son rôle de monnaie de prédilection pour les sukuks, seuls 10 % des émissions s’effectuant dans cette devise.

Les hedge funds ont subi des rachats nets de 150 milliards de dollars en décembre, bien que certains d"entre eux aient décidé de suspendre les remboursements, rapporte le Financial Times. Cela représente 10 % des actifs du secteur et porte le total des sorties nettes sur 2008 à 200 milliards de dollars.

As of 31 December, the end of the third quarter of its fiscal year, the alternative manager Man Group had assets of USD53.3bn, which is 21.15% less than at the end of September, and 28.55% less than at the end of March.The decline is due partially to net redemptions of USD3.2bn in October-December (Man Group, however, shows net inflows of USD1bn in the nine-month period), and negative market effects of USD4.7bn in April-December (though they were positive to the tune of USD1.2bn in October-December).In addition to this, assets under management were negatively impacted by measures to reduce risks for the MGS range, and rebalancing of the AHL and Glenwood product ranges. These resulted in a reduction of USD9.7bn in October-December and of USD11.4bn in April-December.Currency effects and ?other factors? respectively cost USD2.6bn and USD6.2bn. Man Group also indicates that at the end of December, assets under management for retail clients totalled USD32.3bn, compared with USD40.8bn three months earlier, and USD43.5bn at the end of March. Despite net redemptions of USD1.1bn in October-December, retail investors brought in a net total of EUR3bn in the first nine months of the fiscal year.However, institutionals withdrew a total of USD2.1bn in the quarter ending on 31 December, and USD2bn in April-December. Institutional assets as of the end of December represented USD21bn, compared with USD26.8bn at the end of September, and USD31.1bn nine months previously.

La Tribune reports that an alliance of Citigroup and Morgan Stanley in the area of brokerage to create a financial intermediation joint venture will accelerate the transformation of Morgan Stanley into a banking holding company, while for its part, Citgroup will abandon its profile as a ?genuinely universal global bank.?Some analysts suggest that Citigroup, which has already announced 52,000 layoffs, may announce quarterly losses of USD2.6bn.

According to the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts (NAREIT), real estate investment trusts in the United States lost an average of 37.3% last year, IPE reports, adding that the FTSE NAREIT Equity REIT Index declined by 37.73%, despite a 6.39% rebound in December. The category which performed worst was REITs specialised in commercial real estate, which had average losses of 74.8%, while funds specialised in industrial real estate were down 67.47%. However, REITs specialised in warehouse properties earned returns of 5.1%.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports that the takeover of cominvest (240 open-ended funds) by Allianz Global Investors (230) will result in the closure of many funds, which will leave about 300 funds in the range. The list of funds to be closed will be revealed by the end of March. Together, AGI and cominvest represent about EUR300bn in assets, of which EUR74.7bn are in open-ended funds (as of the end of November), nearly as much as Union Investment (co-operative banks), which has EUR77.1bn.

UBS and HSBC are being targeted by investors who lost money in the Madoff fraud, the Financial Times observes. The newspaper suggests that the two banks should have protected assets allocated to Bernard Madoff more carefully. Lawsuits against the banks have been filed in New York and Luxembourg, and more are in preparation. More than USD4bn are up for grabs, the FT states.

On Wednesday, Deutsche Bank published a provisional estimate of its pre-tax losses at about EUR4.8bn for fourth quarter 2008, due to ?exceptionally difficult? market conditions, which weighed down investments and securities trading; final results for fourth quarter will be published on 5 February. The conditions had a significant impact on trading of credit products (including operations on behalf of the bank’s own capital), activities in the area of equities derivatives, and equities trading with the bank’s own capital. In addition, the quarterly results reflect a reduction in higher-risk positions, a significant downgrade of credit resellers, and restructuring costs. The wealth & asset management division has also suffered losses largely due to an amortisation of non-material assets at DWS Scudder and subsidies for money market funds.For 2008 overall, the bank is projecting pre-tax losses for the group as a whole of EUR3.9bn.

On Wednesday, Universal Investment, the major German specialist in administration and fund accounting, which manages about EUR84bn in assets, announced the recruitment of two insourcing specialists. Jörg Kaden was a member of the board of directors at Frankfurter Service-KAG (FSKAG), and will now become director of insourcing activities. The second new recruit is Stefan Krapf who was previously head of the IT division at FSKAG and a member of the board of directors at the Luxembourg affiliate of Frankfurt-Trust (BHF-Bank, Sal. Oppenheim group): he becomes a member of the board of directors at Universal-IT-Services, and will be in charge of the IT aspects of insourcing activities.

On Wednesday, Threadneedle confirmed the departure at the end of January, ?by mutual agreement,? of David Gasparro, director of sales.Gasparro will initially not be replaced: the distribution apparatus is currently functioning well with the current personnel.The departure of Gasparro will be taken as an occasion to ?reconsider the structure, activities, and function of distribution in the light of the evolving market conditions, in order to optimise the alignment of the organisation with the interests if clients,? the British fund manager states.

According to documents furnished by Lazard to potential buyers, pre-tax profits and earnings at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC declined in recent year by 923% and 54%, respectively, the Wall Street Journal reports. Never the less, salaries at the trading affiliate of the group increased by 11.5% in 2008 and 11% in 2007, although bonuses declined slightly in 2007. According to Tamar Frankel, a professor of law at the University of Boston, Bernard Madoff probably boosted the pay of his traders to give the impression that activities were robust and do avoid raising the suspicions as to the health of the group as a whole.

The independent management firm EMCore SA, based in Zug, a specialist in convertible bonds, has been selected by Julius Baer as sub-advisor for the Global Convert sub-fund of its Luxembourg Sicav JB Multibound, launched on 15 October 1993. The currency of reference for the fund is the Euro, and shares hedged for currency risks are denominated in Euros, US dollars, and Swiss francs.The fund currently has about CHF100m in assets, and may soon grow to a volume of CHF200-200m. The product was previously managed by the bond team at Julius Baer in Zurich. With EMCore, a specialist in management for institutional investors (CHF3.5bn in assets), Julius Baer gains access to expertise in this particular area, while the independent management boutique will profit commercially from the brand image of Julius Baer with retail clients.The portfolio of the Global Convert fund is divided between a defensive allocation and a cyclical/tactical allocation. The fund has the potential to participate in rising markets, and also to obtain excess net returns in stagnating or falling market conditions, says Julius Baer. To conserve capital invested, the fund invests exclusively in investment grade convertible bonds, which is also reflected in the choice of the new benchmark index for the fund, UBS Global Conv. Index.

For 2009, Jeffries Putnam Lovell, an affiliate of the Jeffries & Company investment bank, is predicting that large-scale mergers and acqusitions in asset management will increase, though they were scarce in 2008. This will be due to the forced sales of investment divisions by commercial banks and insurers, concentration in the alternative management business, and increased opportunities for acquisitions by financial sector businesses which emerge relatively unscathed from the financial and credit crises. The most active buyers in the past ten years, commercial and investment banks, as well as insurers, will sell their asset management divisions, or seek strategic partners for them.USD1.99trn last yearBy the number of transactions, 2008 was the second most active year in global asset management, with 217 deals, compared with 242 in 2007. The assets concerned were equivalent to those in 2007, at USD1.99trn (the record was set in 2006, at USD2.65trn). On the basis of declared total amounts, volumes have plunged drastically, to USD16.1bn, compared with USD52.1bn in 2007. In addition, 2008 was only the fifth-largest year ever by this criterion. Only three deals measured more than USD1bn, compared with 15 in 2007. Kevin Pakenham, managing director of Jeffries Putnam Lovell in London, says European banks are now facing the consequences of their success as distributors and their failure as producers of investment management services. In 2009, we will see a continuation of the emergence of a strong independent sector, along the lines of the model which is already well-established in the United States, the manager says.

To win back retail clients, Putnam Investments on 1 January launched four absolute performance mutual funds promising returns 1, 3, 5, and 7 percentage points higher than those of Treasury bills, as measured by a Merrill Lynch index. The result will be measured at three-year intervals, so that losses in one year may be compensated by performance in another, the Wall Street Journal reports. Putnam had assets at the end of 2008 of USD106bn, of which USD54bn were in mutual funds and USD52bn managed on behalf of institutional clients.

Minimal subscription for the new British-registered OEIC (Open-Ended Investment Company) Baring Global Agriculture Fund is set at GBP2,000, Baring Asset Management announced on Wednesday, adding that management commission is set at 1% per year. The fund, announced last year (see Newsmanagers of 20 May 2008) will be invested in companies which earn a large part of their revenues from activities related to agriculture, or which are likely to profit from this theme. The product is managed by Jonathan Blake, who also manages the Baring Global Resources Fund.During an initial four-month period, the fund will be sold exclusively to IFAs via the Standard Life platform, says Rod Aldridge, head of UK retail distribution at Barings.

Hedge funds suffered net redemptions of USD150bn in December, even though some funds decided to suspend redemptions, the Financial Times reports. These redemptions represent 10% of total assets in the sector, and bring total net outflows in 2008 to USD200bn.

The Corporate Special Opportunities hedge fund from Citigroup will pay out dividends to investors of only 3 cents on every USD1 invested, the Financial Times reports. These dividends are lower than expected as the bank has decided to close the fund.

Raoul Weil, a board member at UBS, who is currently suspended from his duties, has been classed as a ?fugitive? by the US Department of Justice, according to a verdict announced by a Federal judge in Miami. Charges have been pressed against the head of wealth management for helping 20,000 American clients to evade approximately USD20bn in US taxes, Le Temps reports, adding that the defendant, who currently resides in Switzerland, has no intention of turning himself in to the United States authorities.

An employee of Blackstone, Ramesh Chakrapani, has been accused by the Securities & Exchange Commission of insider trading in relation to the acquisition, in 2006, of the Albertson’s supermarket chain by a consortium which included Cerberus Capital, Supervalu and CVS. Chakrapani is accused of helping parents and friends to gain USD3.6m on the back of inside information.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) in the United States has studied 19 complaints concerning trading operations by Bernard Madoff’s brokerage firm since 1999, but was not able to raise questions about investment advising activities, which were at the heart of the fraud, since it was not authorised to do so. FINRA oversees about 5,000 broker-dealers registered in the United States.

The OECD has warned that the current regulatory framework in Europe increases the risk of problems on the financial markets, the Financial Times reports. The organisation proposes a European union of regulatory agencies, on the model of the one used to define the monetary policy of the European Central Bank.

Des projets sont reportés. Toutefois, tous les actifs ne pourront pas être absorbés par le marché compte tenu du ralentissement économique

Les avantages consentis aux occupants ont augmenté en 2008. Les loyers devraient globalement baisser en 2009

Le 29 décembre 2008, BNP Paribas REIM a acquis, pour le compte de TPF2, 6 plateformes industrielles «courrier et colis» de grandes qualités, louées à La Poste, pour un montant de 128,7 millions d"euros. Cette transaction, conclue en moins d"un trimestre, a été financée à hauteur de 40 % par de l"emprunt auprès de HSBC. Les fonds propres ont été apportés par des investisseurs institutionnels français et la filiale immobilière de La Poste, Poste Immo. Pour cette transaction, BNP Paribas REIM a été conseillé par l"étude Thibierge (Maître Fremeaux) et le cabinet Bird & Bird.Par ailleurs, le 30 décembre dernier, BNP Paribas REIM a acquis, auprès de Foncière des Régions, pour le compte de TPF1, 29 immeubles loués à France Télécom, pour un montant global de l"ordre de 100 millions d"euros. Cette acquisition a été financée à hauteur de 30 % par emprunt, les fonds propres étant apportés par des investisseurs institutionnels et des fonds d"investissement internationaux. Pour cette acquisition, BNP Paribas REIM s"est entouré du cabinet Baker & McKenzie et de l"étude Thibierge (Maître Fremeaux). Dédiés à des investisseurs institutionnels qualifiés, ces deux OPCI RFA EL (à règles de fonctionnement allégées à effet de levier), respectivement agréés par l"AMF en date des 21 juillet et 9 décembre 2008, se définissent par une stratégie d"investissement orientée sur des actifs à caractère technique, loués à des locataires de premier rang, au travers de baux longs.

Mardi, Citigroup a annoncé que Morgan Stanley va lui payer 2,7 milliards de dollars en numéraire pour sa participation dans Smith Barney, qui entre dans une joint venture. Cette transaction va générer aussi environ 10 milliards de dollars de plus-values avant impôt pour Citigroup, indique The Wall Street Journal.Selon les proches du dossier, Citigroup aurait l’intention de réduire son activité d’un tiers en vendant ses filiales de crédit à la consommation Primerica Financial Services et CitiFinancial ainsi sa division cartes de crédit. D’autre part, le groupe prévoirait de réduire son activité de négoce en compte propre. Citigroup, qui a refusé de commenter, se concentrerait sur la clientèle d’entreprises et de particuliers haut de gamme.

Le Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp, une agence fédérale qui assure les retraites privées, s"est identifiée comme créancier dans la liquidation de la société de Bernard Madoff, rapporte le Wall Street Journal. Cela laisse penser qu"il se prépare à des faillites de sociétés dans le sillage de la fraude Madoff.