Wells Fargo & Company announced that Ellen Patterson will join the company as its senior executive vice president and general counsel, effective March 23, 2020. Reporting to CEO Charlie Scharf, Patterson will be responsible for all legal affairs at the company and will serve on the company’s Operating Committee.
“Ellen is a seasoned lawyer with extensive experience in the financial services industry, where she has had responsibilities for managing and advising on global legal and regulatory compliance risks,” Scharf said. “She will play a critical leadership role on our Operating Committee as we continue to work on our company’s top priority of meeting regulatory expectations.”
Patterson joins Wells Fargo after more than seven years at TD Bank Group, where she most recently served as group head and general counsel responsible for leading the bank’s global Legal, Compliance, Anti-Money Laundering, Corporate Secretary, Global Security & Investigations, and Fraud Risk Management teams. Earlier, she served as general counsel for TD Bank’s U.S. banking operations. For the past two years, she has chaired TD Bank’s global Women in Leadership program, supporting programs and practices to advance the careers of a diverse group of female employees.
Prior to joining TD Bank, Patterson was a partner at the New York law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, where she focused on advising financial institutions on mergers & acquisitions, capital markets, and corporate governance matters.
“I am excited to join Wells Fargo during a transformational time in the company’s history,” Patterson said. “I look forward to collaborating with leaders across the company to shape the culture, help businesses innovate, and produce the best outcomes for the customers and communities Wells Fargo serves.”
Patterson is a graduate of Columbia Law School and received her undergraduate degree from Harvard University. She has been recognized as one of 25 “Women to Watch” by American Banker in each of the past four years.
Funds Society held its first Investments & Rodeo Summit 2020 in Houston, Texas on March 5.
Over 35 people attended the event, including bankers, advisers and fund selectors, as well as representatives of the four participating managers (Aberdeen Standard Investments, Carmignac, Ninety One / Investec and Vontobel).
Tam McVie, CIO at Aberdeen Standard Investments, noted that we are in an environment where we need to protect capital.In general, the manager mentioned that long-term performance expectations have been compressed, and although a global recession is not part of his base scenario, he emphasizes that having a diverse portfolio is the best way to protect yourself through investments.
To him, “a diverse portfolio should also have diverse return sources, and a diverse income stream.”So, when building their portfolio, they seek “for diversification from return streams and cash flows that are not dependent on the same economic environment.”McVie is also looking to benefit from the illiquid market but using liquid vehicles, such as listed alternatives, which, in his opinion, “actually have less volatility than REITs.”
Bradley George, Managing Director in the US Institutional team at Ninety One (previously Investec Asset Management) mentions that given the uncertainties we live in (which in his opinion has COVID-19 in the first place, followed by tensions between the US and China, and the trade relationship between the UK and the EU after Brexit), the current outlook for global growth is low, creating a situation where “some people say it’s better to do a flight to safety and others say it presents an opportunity.”
At this time and with the increase in global debt, which will increase even more due to easing, he believes that among high-quality companies, the most important quality to have is a healthy balance and low capital intensity. Regarding regions, he points out that “an EM allocation costs more due to high fees, but it is a high growth area, so our portfolio has over 30% revenue exposure to EM, with US compliance and such”.
Didier Saint-Georges, Member of the Strategic Investment Committee and Managing Director at Carmignac,said in his presentation that in fixed income you have to analize if the market is right when you buy, because unless it goes bankrupt you will get it in the end, but that they do not expect interest rates to rebound soon. “Crises never happen in a vacuum, they happen in a context and the current one is one of low growth, deflationary pressures and one in which central banks have been using a lot of ammunition to push forward the recession and there is not so much left…”
With regard to the COVID-19 situation, the specialist mentions that since January we saw cases in China “and it is important to realize that an epidemic works with a bell shaped curve, it accelerates first before hitting a plateau and going down, And outside China we are still in the acceleration phase. There is going to be a big economic cost. Our central scenario does look like a recession because this type of crisis cannot be contained but by stopping activities, so that becomes a cash problem.”
To protect their investments in this context, Carmignac has reduced portfolio risk and upped duration. “In fixed income now we have low levels of yield, increased volatility, and scarce secondary liquidity. Sensitivity to interest rates have skyrocketed because of very low low interest rates.” One way to fight this is by using a global approach, given that “the quality of issuers has gone down and yields are low but dispersion creates opportunities.” He concludes.
For Felipe Villaroel, portfolio manager at TwentyFour Asset Management, a boutique from Vontobel Asset Management, who specializes in a multi-sector bond strategy, the coronavirus situation became a “gamechanger” for the duration portion of fixed income portfolios, as they did not plan to increase theirs but did so after the first unexpected move by the Fed, in which a cut of 50 basis points was made.
“The Fed wanted to bring calm to the markets by doing something they did not do since Lehman Brothers fell and this is not the same. In my opinion, what it did was introduce more volatility in the market,” he says, adding that “this is going to be a big shock to the growth of the world in a quarter, maybe two, but it is going to be something temporary.”
In his opinion, and seeing that China has reached a plateau in the contagion curve, and that after a month and a half its PMIs are at historical lows, he reminded the audience that the most important thing is to see what will happen with March’s numbers: “if they show a rebound, a new fall or remain flat, that will allow us to see how long it takes for an economy to recover after the crisis.”
At night, and from Funds Society’s box, attendees enjoyed traditional Texan food at the Houston Rodeo, which included a concert by Becky G.
The ETF that seeks to replicate the FTSE BIVA index, giving investors access and exposure to the Mexican capital market, managed in its first three months to raise 1 billion pesos, even though, by size, institutional investors were still not able to invest in it.
As Juan Hernández, Vanguard’s Country Manager in Mexico, comments in an interview with Funds Society, the goal for the remainder of 2020, rather than to grow in absolute value, which he considers will exceed 100% of assets under management, is that “institutionals participate more actively in the product… For us, success comes when more and more Mexican investors use it,” he says, adding that “we are giving the Mexican market a diversified solution, with an easily accessible structure and it is also the cheapest Mexican variable income product, plus, the index that we choose the FTSE-BIVA has almost 59 issuers from all sectors of the economy, FIBRAs and others, diversification that has rendered more than 100 basis points above the CPI index”.
The VMEX is the first investment vehicle launched by Vanguard in the Latin American market and with it, Mexico became the eighth platform of the American firm. “It is a milestone for Vanguard in Mexico,” says the manager, adding that this product complements his available portfolio in Mexico of more than 90 international ETFs currently listed in the International Quotation System (SIC) that offer international exposure, mainly to the United States and Europe to Mexican investors.
“Hopefully it will be the first of many products we launch. We want to be a local asset manager, using Mexican asset classes. It is somewhere where we want to participate and add value. Always with the Vanguard philosophy of offering well-diversified products at low cost”, he comments.
Hernandez also tells us that, as an asset class, they are analyzing Mexican fixed income to see what their next product could be. Adding that they are not the type to launch niche products but rather focus on the “large asset classes that make sense for the vast majority of portfolios, because it is there where we can add scale and offer products at very low cost… We look forward to announcing a Mexican fixed income product this year.” He points out.
About the industry in general, Hernández considers that the regulatory changes seen in the afores (Mexican pension funds) last year, such as the transtition to taget-date funds or the fact that international mutual funds can finally be used, have been very positive for the market and he would like to see the proposal to raise the 20% limit afores’ limist on foreign investment made into effect. However, he also notes that important advances are being made in the market in general in terms of diversification. “The portfolio part of multi-asset strategies is already above 15% of the market and although there is an industry that mainly invests in short-term Mexican fixed income, that percentage has been decreasing at the expense of multi-asset solutions and foreign securities. The trend is positive in that Mexicans increasingly diversify their portfolios and, from our point of view, they are building portfolios better, in terms of risk return and we are contributing to this in terms of product and advice.” He concludes.
Funds Society presents the fourth edition of its Asset Manager’s Guide NRI, a comprehensive list of asset management firms offering UCITS investment solutions to investment professionals in the wealth management non resident industry.
Something relevant to note between this guide and its previous edition is the impressive movement of sales professionals from one company to another, a process that seems to never end.
At Funds Society, we believe that this, as well as the growing number of asset managers establishing offshore teams in the United States, reflects the good health of the non-resident investment market.
To help you keep track of all these changes, we’ve put together a list that includes information from nearly 60 international asset management firms doing business in the NRI market through their range of UCITS products, as well as their contact information.
In addition, we also include additional information on 17 of these firms that indicate their business proposal for the Americas region.
“We brought together the true disruptors of the financial industry to ask them to share their vision of the market,” said Claudio Izquierdo, Chief Operating Officer of Participant Capital, in his opening remarks at the Miami Investment Forum. This one-day closed event convened over 200 financial advisors, politicians, attorneys, real estate experts from the U.S., and Latin America at the PARAMOUNT Miami Worldcenter, the second largest development in the U.S.
“As Amazon and Airbnb disrupt the retail and hospitality industries, we disrupt the real estate investment field with our own products,” said Daniel Kodsi, CEO of Participant Capital and Royal Palm Companies, presenting his next ground-up debut – Legacy Hotel & Residences. The mixed-use tower, rising across the street from the PARAMOUNT Miami Worldcenter, is an excellent example of how one development consolidates all of the trends that are driving opportunities in real estate.”
Daniel Kodsi, a real estate veteran, believes, among the fundamental shifts, we will continue to see strong demand for mixed-use products and branded residences that provide the services and amenities of a full luxury hotel to residence users. The luxury market will continue to bring the younger affluent buyers to South Florida attracted by the state’s sunshine and lack of income tax. The healthcare sector is another gamechanger, moving its urgent care services and medical facilities out of the hospital closer to the residents. Legacy Hotel & Residences will be equipped with the city’s first-of-its-kind medical and wellness center, with digital diagnostic walls and doors, “herbal baristas,” IV solutions, hormonal balancing, and more.
The keynote speaker, former senator Jeff Flake, was impressed with significant transformations that are happening in Miami. He shared his view on the political landscape during the election year. Despite all the issues that we have, Jeff Flake said, “the U.S. is a center-right country and its tax and regulatory policy are conducive to business.” “It will continue whatever administration is in,” concluded Flake.
David G. Shapiro, co-chair of the tax, compensation, and employee benefits group of Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LL, covered investments in opportunity zones and its capital gain taxation benefits. Emilio Veiga Gil, Executive VP of FlexFunds, presented case studies in asset securitization. Sergio Alvarez Mena, partner at Jones Day, brought legal perspectives on doing business in Latin America and the U.S.
The C-Suite panel was devoted to disruptive trends in the financial advisory model. While independent RIA’s models continue to rise and new emerging tools are flooding the financial market, Craig Gould, President of Wentworth Management Services, noted that when it comes to retaining top talents in the industry, this golden rule works best: “Do what you say, process business on-schedule, and provide payment on time. And your advisors will not have a reason to leave.”
After the presentations, Participant Capital welcomed guests to a cocktail reception on the 7th floor pool deck. That night, thousands of lights illuminated the PARAMOUNT Miami Worldcenter in recognition of the first Miami Investment Forum. Participant Capital has said that this event would come to the new locations this year. Stay tuned!
To watch the corporate 2020 forum video, follow this link.
Pixabay CC0 Public DomainPhoto: NextVoyage. Gonzálo Canelas se une a Bolton Global
Bolton Global Capital announced that Gonzalo Canelas has joined the firm. Canelas was formerly an advisor with Morgan Stanley in New York City where he advised client accounts worth more than $240 million. After initially working at Bolton’s branch in New York City, he will be moving to the firm’s office at the Four Seasons Tower in Miami later this year.
Canelas began his career at the Manhattan office of Morgan Stanley in 2010 where he remained for the past 10 years prior to joining Bolton. He services an ultra-high net worth clientele based in Latin America with a concentration in Bolivia. Over the past two and a half years, Bolton has recruited 8 financial advisors from Morgan Stanley in New York City collectively managing more than $1 billion in client assets.
Gonzalo is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University with a double major in Economics and Industrial Management and holds an MBA from St. Joseph’s University.
Bolton Global Capital is a boutique firm focused on managing the wealth of high net worth individuals on a global basis. The firm specializes in converting top tier financial advisors from the major financial institutions to the independent business model by providing turnkey office space and a full suite of international wealth management capabilities. By transitioning to independence, financial advisors achieve higher compensation, greater ownership of their business and customized solutions to support their growth.
Wikimedia Commons. HMC Capital firma un acuerdo de distribución con DoubleLine
HMC Capital, a recognized financial advisory and investment firm, has signed a distribution agreement with DoubleLine Capital, a leading Los Angeles-headquartered investment management firm founded by Jeffrey Gundlach.
Following this agreement, HMC will distribute DoubleLine’s strategies, including the Shiller Enhanced CAPE investment strategy for institutional investors in Chile and Peru. The investment strategy is classified by research firm Morningstar as Large Cap Blend equity.
The DoubleLine Shiller Enhanced CAPE strategy seeks to outperform the S&P 500 index. The primary source of return is the portfolio’s exposure to the Shiller Barclays CAPE U.S. Core Sector Net ER USD Index NoC (CAPE Index), obtained through derivatives. A secondary source of return is achieved by actively investing the net assets in fixed income securities, which also collateralize the derivatives. Under the investment strategy’s “double-value proposition” net of costs, one dollar invested in the portfolio obtains one dollar exposure in the fixed income portfolio and one dollar of exposure to large-cap U.S. stocks via the CAPE index.
DoubleLine Capital and its related companies (“DoubleLine”) is an investment adviser registered under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. DoubleLine and its related entities manage over 150 billion dollars in assets across all vehicles, including open-end mutual funds, collective investment trusts, closed-end funds, exchange-traded funds, hedge funds, variable annuities, UCITS and separate accounts.
The agreement with DoubleLine strengthens HMC Capital’s goal of representing leading fund managers in equities and fixed income globally, offering specialized investment opportunities to its clients.
“The DoubleLine Shiller Enhanced CAPE investment strategy has consistently outperformed the S&P 500 with its double-value enhancement proposition,” said Nicolás Fonseca, Head of Institutional Sales from HMC Capital. “DoubleLine is one of the top asset managers globally. We look forward to working with DoubleLine and are proud to represent and help expand the firm’s presence in Latin America.”
“It is important for us to have strong local representation in order to better serve our clients,” said Joel Peña, Head of Institutional and Intermediary Relations for DoubleLine in Latin America and the Caribbean. “We are therefore delighted to now have a strategic partnership with a firm like HMC Capital, a group of highly regarded professionals that have demonstrated a strong commitment to investors”.
PIMCO has chosen Nomi Network, Women for Women International and Girls Who Invest as its key gender equality partners for 2020. According to a press release, “the enhanced partnerships reflect PIMCO’s continued commitment to gender equality – within the investment management industry and throughout communities worldwide.”
PIMCO has worked with each of these gender equality focused organizations in various capacities over the years, alongside many others, but will expand its partnerships with all three organizations to increase impact and reach in 2020. The enhanced partnerships with Nomi Network and Women for Women International will support the economic empowerment of vulnerable women and girls. PIMCO’s partnership with Girls Who Invest will continue to help further build a talent pipeline of women investors in the asset management industry.
“Our focus on gender equality reflects our belief that everybody, regardless of gender, deserves equal access to opportunities, prospects and economic security,” said Emmanuel Roman, CEO of PIMCO. “We champion gender equality and diversity right here at PIMCO, throughout the investment management industry and in communities worldwide, not only because we believe it is right, but because we believe diversity in any industry and any community, makes us all stronger.”
The partnerships are part of PIMCO’s broader gender equality initiatives, driven in part by PIMCO’s Women & Investing platform which consists of three main focus areas – Women in Investing, Women as Investors and Investing in Women. These expanded partnerships reinforce PIMCO’s commitment to these focus areas.
Pixabay CC0 Public Domain. Aviva Investors llega a un acuerdo de distribución con Capital Strategies Partners para España, Portugal, Brasil y Uruguay
Aviva Investors, the asset manager of insurer Aviva, has struck a distribution deal with Madrid based Capital Strategies Partners, that will allow them to sell investment capabilities into Spain, Portugal, Brazil and Urugruay.
CSP will focus on distributing Aviva Investors’ credit, equity, liquidity, multi-asset and real assets capabilities through its wholesale and intstitutional channels.
According to a press release, the deal completes the manager’s geographical coverage of Iberia and Latin America, and complements an existing partnership with Exel Capital, which represents Aviva for the institutional markets in Chile, Peru and Columbia.
Charlie Jewkes, Head of Global Financial Institutions at Aviva Investors, will work with CSP in Brazil and Uruguay, while Paolo Sarno, head of Southern Europe at Aviva Investors, will work with CSP on distribution in Spain and Portugal. Cristina Rubio, Pedro Costa Felix, Jorge Benguria and Agustin Mariatti will lead the sales efforts in these markets for CSP.
Jewkes said: “We are delighted to enter into a partnership with CSP, which has a 20-year track record of raising assets in these markets for international asset managers. I believe this arrangement will be transformational in providing Aviva Investors with a footprint to promote our investment capabilities in some of the most exciting markets in the world.”
“As global macro, socioeconomic and regulatory changes continue to accelerate opportunities for international asset managers in the Latin American and Iberian regions, we look forward to bringing our full suite of capabilities to clients in those markets. The combination of growing personal wealth and some of the most forward-looking long-term savings reforms make the region extremely attractive. Our broader credentials as a leader in responsible investment provide us with an excellent platform to partner with early adopters of this philosophy, which we are already beginning to see.”
Daniel Rubio, CEO, Capital Strategies Partners, said: “We are delighted to kick off this project and work with Aviva Investors in some of our markets, which we are confident will be a success. Aviva Investors’ strong investment offering, asset management and insurance heritage and leadership in responsible investing will be very attractive to clients in these markets.”
The invitation for Franklin Templeton Mexico‘s 15th Anniversary party read: “2005; The first elections in Iraq; YouTube is born; Prince Carlos and Camila de Cornwall get married; Vicente Fox is president of Mexico; The Patriots win the Super Bowl XXXIX; Pope John Paul II dies, Mexico City Metrobus is launched; Evo Morales is elected president in Bolivia; Angela Merkel is elected Germany’s first female chancellor; George W. Bush is president of the United States again, “Million Dollar Baby” wins the Oscar for best film and Franklin Templeton opens his office in Mexico.” In charge of that office was, and continues to be, Hugo Petricioli, one of the main drivers of the country’s fund industry. In an interview with Funds Society, the manager talks about what the market was like then, how it is now and how he thinks it will evolve…
Petricioli, whose team today has over 30 people covering not only Mexico but also Central America from an office overlooking the famous “Independence Angel” on Reforma avenue, in Mexico City, remembers that when he established the firm, he worked from home for a year and had friends who “thought I was unemployed.”
At that time, they were the first firm in Mexico without its own distribution network, “that model is the model of a pure asset manager, we had to look for and expect many regulatory changes because the Mexican regulatory system came from the idea that operators were just an appendix of brokerage firms, that has changed a lot.” During 2006, several global asset managers tried to establish themselves in the region, but “by 2009 the majority had closed or radically changed their plans for the country, due to the lack of fiscal transparency and the issue with funds of funds, which in retrospect I think it was a very bad thing for the funds supply in Mexico and it greatly limited Mexican investors.”
Today, in his opinion, the sector has changed little at first sight, “the fund distributors did not multiply although their model can be very beneficial for investors, independent investment advisors practically do not participate in the sector because they don’t have the right platforms to maintain competitive prices and the players remain practically the same and in the same order as when we opened the office.”
However, he also considers that “there are important changes that are not noticed so easily: the corporate figure change , the specialization also changed, we see how the big banks are now looking for international managers to advise them on products where they do not have the experience and this is improving the quality of products in Mexico as well as the offer. As an industry we are much more united and we are weighing more and more, not only as a percentage of GDP but also as market participants,” he says.
About the future, Petricioli is positive: “I tend to be optimistic, otherwise I would never have started this adventure in an industry where all platforms were closed. The sector in Mexico is going to have to consolidate, the small players don’t have viability, the “groups” paradigm has to be broken, specialization is the way to grow and grow better.” As they say in Mexico “zapatero a tus zapatos” which means do what you are good at and what you are supposed to do. “I think that small and large players have to analyze in what business they are, are they distributors or managers? If they want to be both they need to make a real analysis of their own economies of scale. Do they really have them? Or not? And if they don’t have them they should have to rethink their model and decide. If we do things right, this sector could double in size in 5 years,” he comments.
To achieve this, the manager would like to see, among other things, a more competitive vehicle, a much more agile regulation and an improvement in the quality and quantity of information. “The Mexican vehicle is not competitive outside of Mexico because of the regulatory and fiscal framework, my industry colleagues are [competitive] and it is a pity that they cannot export their skills and be even more successful. With more and better standards everything would be clearer for everyone.” He mentions.
In his opinion, “the main challenge is that everything is complicated, nothing is agile. It is confusing. If we want to be inclusive and give all Mexicans the opportunity to generate wealth, we have to do something with absolutely all the materials, prospects, key documents, etc. Have you read a prospectus recently? Try to make a comparison in Mexico of funds, we don’t even have a standard in the Mexican series.”
Meanwhile, Petricioli and his team will continue to work to strengthen a market of which Jenny Johnson, president and CEO, of Franklin Resources said during the anniversary party: “As far back as the 1980s we saw the tremendous potential of Mexico and began making investments here with our emerging markets team…We look forward to strengthening these partnerships and deepening our relationships with you for the next 15 years…and beyond.”
In general, the success obtained so far “has been due to two factors: a large company with a great ethical standard and the possibility of building a great team. Without the team, we would not have been able to do anything. Success belongs to each and every one in it, and now we are presented with a great opportunity to offer products to all Mexicans that can generate wealth from their flow,” concludes Petricioli.
