Foto cedidaDe izquierda a derecha, Cristina Caamaño, Guillermo Viñuales y Celia Galofré.. credit suisse
Credit Suisse has announced that Harald Réczek has been appointed Head of EMEA and Swiss Distribution for Asset Management. He will take on this new role effective immediately.
The hire emphasizes Credit Suisse Asset Management’s renewed commitment to investing in and building out its distribution in EMEA and Switzerland with a focus on institutional and wholesale markets. As Head of EMEA and Swiss Distribution, Harald Réczek will be responsible for managing the distribution of Core and Alternative Investments in Switzerland, Continental Europe, the United Kingdom and the Middle East.
Harald Réczek will be based in Zurich, and will report functionally to Charles Shaffer, Head of CSAM Global Distribution, and locally to Tim Blackwell.
Harald joins Credit Suisse from Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management where he most recently served as Co-CEO of Deutsche Asset Management Switzerland, as a member of the Deutsche Bank Switzerland Executive Committee, and as a member of the EMEA Distribution Management Board of the Global Client Group. Prior to this, he was Head of the Global Client Group Switzerland, Italy, Austria and Central and Eastern Europe. In these roles he successfully managed both retail and institutional distribution for the division.
Tim Blackwell, Head of Global Core Investments, said: “Harald has an impressive track record in the industry, in-depth experience, and a strong network. He will play a key role in growing our direct distribution efforts both in the Swiss and European markets.”
Photo: Mark Hillary. Bradesco to Buy HSBC Brasil’s Unit for US$ 5.2 Billion
Banco Bradesco SA, Brazil’s No. 2 private-sector bank, agreed to buy HSBC Holdings Plc’s Brazilian unit for BRL 17.6 billion (US$ 5.2 billion), narrowing the gap with larger rivals while boosting its base of affluent customers in Latin America’s largest economy, according to Reuters.
The deal between Bradesco and Europe’s largest banks includes the latter’s Brazilian retail banking and insurance units. The agreement, which still requires regulatory approval and was sealed on July 31, could close by June.
The purchase price, which could change to reflect the net asset value of both businesses, is equivalent to 1.8 times book value, way above what analysts expected and above Bradesco’s own valuation. On July 20th, it was reported that Bradesco had entered exclusive talks with HSBC after offering to pay about BRL 12 billion, or 1.2 times book value. Shares of Bradesco posted their steepest drop since July 23, shedding 4 percent.
The all-cash acquisition will allow Bradesco to close the asset gap with larger rivals Itaú Unibanco Holding SA and state-controlled banks Banco do Brasil SA and Caixa Econômica Federal.
HSBC Brasil’s focus on high-income customers fits well into Bradesco’s plan to ramp up sales of specialized financial services for the wealthy and larger corporations.
The takeover, Bradesco’s first since the 2009 purchase of Banco Ibi SA, will increase its assets by 16%, number of branches by 18% and staff by 23%. Bradesco expects the purchase to contribute to earnings starting in 2017.
Bradesco paid BRL 10.4 billion for HSBC Bank Brasil, BRL 4.7 billion for the HSBC Serviços insurance unit and BRL 2.5 billion for a measure of future additional revenues or scale gains, it said in a presentation.
Following the acquisition, Bradesco’s capital regulatory ratio, a measure of solvency strength, will decline to 9.9% from 12.8% currently. Analysts estimated that Bradesco could deduct as much as BRL 6.5 billion in goodwill from the HSBC acquisition.
On the other hand, HSBC’s sale of its Brazilian business represents a retreat from the second-largest emerging market economy after years of disappointing performance.
HSBC, which arrived in Brazil late in the 1990s, never gained enough size to pose a real threat to Itaú, Bradesco or Banco do Brasil, the nation’s top lender by assets. HSBC Brasil has 854 branches and 21,000 employees. Its assets of about BRL 170 billion represent about 2.3 percent of the total for Brazil’s banking system.
HSBC was advised on the deal by its own investment banking unit and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Bradesco was advised by its own investment banking unit Bradesco BBI, as well as JPMorgan Chase & Co and NM Rothschild & Sons Ltd.
Photo: Hernán Piñera. Henderson Global Investors Launches Global Multi-Asset SICAV
Henderson has expanded its global multi-asset portfolio offering with launch of the Henderson Horizon Global Multi-Asset Fund (SICAV). This is Henderson’s first UCITS multi-asset fund and further broadens the range of global products offered by Henderson Global Investors.
The Fund will be managed by both Bill McQuaker and Paul O’Connor, with additional support provided by Chris Paine, Director of Research. The team has a 10 year track record in multi-asset investing.
The Henderson Horizon Global Multi-Asset Fund will launch upon the merger of the Henderson Diversified Growth SIF, and its initial assets under management will be around £100 million.
The Fund expects to build long term attractive returns with lower volatility than equity markets. This is achieved by making flexible, conviction-led asset allocation decisions across a broad range of asset classes and strategies.
Greg Jones, head of EMEA retail and Latin America says, “The launch of the Henderson Horizon Global Multi-Asset Fund allows clients based outside of the UK to access the skill set of our highly regarded multi-asset team in a structure that is more familiar to them.
“Following the launch of the All Asset Fund in our US mutual range almost three years ago, the new fund will effectively complete the footprint of our global multi-asset offering.”
Bill McQuaker, co-head of multi-asset adds, “The multi-asset market continues to grow, with the total market valued at around £126.5bn.
“The current environment of historically low interest rates and elevated asset prices exposes investors to a range of risks and opportunities.
“By actively managing allocations to a range of asset classes and strategies, we aim to capture returns while protecting investors’ capital during more difficult market environments.”
CC-BY-SA-2.0, FlickrPhoto: historias visuales, Flickr, Creative Commons. Pioneer Investments Posts Record €10.7 Billion Net Sales in First Half of 2015
Global asset manager, Pioneer Investments, posted record inflows of €10.7 billion globally for the first half of the year, reflecting continued positive momentum across all regions and channels. Building on the first quarter of 2015, Pioneer Investments saw €3.6 billion positive net sales in the second quarter positioning the firm as one of the leading players in the industry. According to Morningstar mutual fund flows data, Pioneer Investments ranked 8th in Europe and 15th worldwide year-to-date through June.
The firm’s AuM increased by 19% YoY with assets under management standing at €221 billion as of June 30, 2015. Pioneer Investments’ product range attracted strong flows from markets such as Germany, Italy, Iberia and Latam amongst others, with the firm’s US and Asia businesses also recording positive momentum.
Commenting on these results, Giordano Lombardo, CEO and Group CIO of Pioneer Investments said, “We are extremely pleased to have again ranked amongst the industry’s top players in terms of fund flows, reflecting our clients’ trust in Pioneer’s investment process. We are seeing especially strong growth in our liquid alternative and outcome-oriented strategies. Our multi-asset mutual fund range attracted particularly strong inflows ranking third worldwide year-to-date through June.”
He added, “While our macroeconomic outlook remains reasonably optimistic for the rest of the year, we do expect market volatility to remain heightened, largely driven by geopolitical factors. Our priority remains to deliver strong investment results and industry-leading service and support to our valued clients.”
Foto: Alberto Carrasco, Flickr, Creative Commons. Thomson Reuters lanza una estrategia que combina los modelos de búsqueda de alfa en renta variable de StarMine
Thomson Reuters has announced the release of the StarMine Combined Alpha Model (CAM), a model that combines all the available StarMine equity alpha models into one comprehensive and powerful alpha-generating signal. The weights assigned to each model vary by region. Thus, StarMine CAM recognizes the fact that some regions, such as the US and Japan, are more value focused while in Developed Europe and Asia ex-Japan momentum plays a larger role. The model intelligently handles missing data and makes use of all available StarMine alpha models for a given security.
StarMine CAM provides investment managers with a resourceful factor to help create market-beating portfolios – a factor that distils an enormous quantity of data down to a single score for 30,000 stocks globally every day.
“Clients often ask us ‘what is the best way to combine the StarMine signals?’ We now have our best answer to that question – use StarMine Combined Alpha,” said Dr. George Bonne, director of quantitative research at Thomson Reuters.
Over the last ten years, StarMine has created a number of quantitative equity alpha models to help take advantage of observed market anomalies and human behaviours. Every StarMine model is based on strong economic intuition and supported by a plethora of academic research as well as StarMine’s own rigorous research, backtests and robustness testing. The StarMine models used in StarMine CAM are Analyst Revisions, Relative Valuation, Intrinsic Valuation, Price Momentum, Earnings Quality, Smart Holdings, Insider Filings (US only), and Short Interest (US only). StarMine CAM is StarMine’s best performing alpha model to date.
“We are delighted to be able to combine our content to create a solution that simplifies our clients’ daily tasks in support of their global businesses,” said Debra Walton, chief content officer at Thomson Reuters. “This represents another step forward in our ongoing commitment to connect and enable the global financial community by harnessing our data and analytics in new ways that add greater value.”
StarMine CAM is currently available through Thomson Reuters Eikon, the premier desktop platform for financial professionals, and will be available as a datafeed through DataScope Select in the near future. Thomson Reuters DataScope Select is the strategic data delivery platform for non-streaming content globally. The platform is a full cross-asset offering with intelligently linked data for all Thomson Reuters DataScope content including reference data, corporate actions, legal entity data, end-of-day/intra-day pricing and evaluated pricing services.
CC-BY-SA-2.0, FlickrMauricio Rivero - Foto cedida. Mauricio Rivero se incorpora como socio a Cantor & Webb
Mauricio D. Rivero is joining Cantor & Webb P.A. from private practice. With his addition the firm expands its international tax and estate planning capabilities for international private clients.
Mr. Rivero brings more than 20 years of experience in international tax, business succession planning, probate and trust litigation, U.S. tax compliance and tax controversy work. He assists many international families and businesses with developing strategies to address both inbound and outbound U.S. tax issues with techniques such as U.S. income tax treaty planning and cross-border mergers and acquisitions. He counsels U.S. individuals and companies with regard to their operations abroad as well as foreign individuals and companies with operations in the United States. Mauricio has a great deal of experience creating individualized pre-immigration plans for high net worth foreign individuals seeking to relocate to the United States.
Mauricio said, “I hope to help expand the firm’s already distinguished profile in Latin America and Europe through my experience in the areas of international tax planning, tax compliance and international private wealth services. I look forward to working with my colleagues to provide top quality legal service to our clients and further cement our status as the go-to firm for international private clients.”
After earning a Bachelor of Arts in English and History from Florida International University in 1991, Mauricio spent ten years working for the Internal Revenue Service as a Revenue Agent where he gained significant experience handling a variety of complex tax matters for the Internal Revenue Service including both domestic and international tax issues. Mauricio went on to earn his Juris Doctor from the College of Law at Florida International University in 2005 and has been in private practice ever since.
Born in New Jersey and raised in Miami, Mr. Rivero was admitted to The Florida Bar in 2006. Mauricio was ranked as a Rising Star by Super Lawyers 2015 and listed as a Legal Elite by Florida Trends 2014.
According to ETFGI’s analysis there was US$2.971 trillion invested in the 5,823 ETFs/ETPs listed globally at the end of Q2 2015, assets were down slightly from their record high of US$3.015 trillion at the end of May 2015, while assets in the global hedge fund industry, according to a new report published by Hedge Fund Research HFR, reached a new record high of US$2.969 trillion invested in 8,497 hedge funds, which is US$2 billion smaller than the assets in the global ETF/ETP industry.
This is a significant achievement for the global ETF/ETP industry, which just celebrated its 25th anniversary on March 9th while the hedge fund industry has existed for 66 years. The ETF/ETP industry have been gaining on the assets invested in the hedge fund industry, more notably since the financial crisis in 2008.
In Q1 2015 the performance of the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index was 2.3%, which is only 1.3% higher than the 1% return of the S&P 500 Index. Many investors have been disappointed with the performance of hedge funds over the past few years as the HFRI Fund Weighted Composite Index has delivered returns significantly below the returns of the S&P 500 Index, according to S&P Dow Jones.
With the positive performance of equity markets many investors have been happy with index returns and fees. This situation has benefited ETFs/ETPs, which offer an enormous toolbox of index exposures to various markets and asset classes, including hedge fund indices and some active and smart beta exposures.
The ETF structure offers intraday liquidity, transparency, small minimum investment sizes and at costs that are lower than many other investment products, including futures in many cases. According to our research the asset-weighted average annual cost for ETFs/ETPs is 31 basis points or less than one third of a percent, while fees charged by the majority of hedge funds are 2% of assets and 20% of profits.
Accordingly, net inflows into ETFs/ETPs have been significantly higher than net inflows into hedge funds over the past few years. In the first half of 2015, net inflows into hedge funds globally were US$39.7 billion, while net inflows into ETFs/ETPs globally were US$152.3 billion over the same period.
Capital Group has announced that it plans to launch a fund aimed at European investors. The company will be making one of its global equity strategies from the US simultaneously available to European and Asian investors, pending regulatory approval, later this year.
The new fund, New Perspectives, will be a Luxembourg-domiciled fund (UCITS) and will follow the same unconstrained, global investment approach as in the US. Like the original which launched in 1973, the New Perspectives fund will focus on global blue chips.
Having recognised the continuing evolution of global companies over many decades, the Capital Group New Perspective strategy focuses on blue-chip companies that are well-positioned to take advantage of global secular trends with the potential to develop into leading multinationals. These companies typically have the added experience of working in multiple currencies, regulatory and political regimes and economies.
The new fund will be managed by the same investment team who runs the New Perspective strategy in the US.
Grant Leon, Managing Director, Financial Intermediaries, Europe, said: “US investors have had access to New Perspective Fund for many years and we are excited to bring this strategy to European clients. The launch of the New Perspective strategy will complement our drive to grow our European Financial Intermediary business and epitomises our focus on delivering superior, consistent long-term investment results.”
Stephen Gosztony, Managing Director, Institutional, UK and Ireland, said: “This launch demonstrates our continued focus on making it as simple as possible for our clients in Europe to access the very best of Capital Group’s capabilities. The European institutional market is a core market for Capital Group and we are particularly pleased that investors in the region will be able to benefit from a strategy with such a strong heritage which complements our existing fund range. We believe that the long term aims of the strategy further align our interests with the needs of our clients across the European market.”
Henderson Group Plc published its Interim Results for the six months ended 30 June 2015 on 30 July 2015. By the end of this period, its assets under management had experienced a growth of 10%; ending the first half of this year with GBP 82.1 billion under management.
Its net inflows in these past six months totaled GBP 5.6 billion. This new record on net inflows is attributed to the consistently strong investment performance, as 83% of funds are outperforming relevant metrics over the past three years.
Andrew Formica, Chief Executive of Henderson, said: “We are very pleased to have delivered another six months of record net inflows, built on consistently strong investment performance for our clients which highlights the strength of our active approach”. These new net inflows represent an annualized net new money growth of 14% in the period.
Back in April, Henderson Global Investors announced the sale of its 40% stake in TH Real Estate, to CREF for GBP 80 million, and the transaction was closed in June. Apart from this divestiture, new acquisitions were announced in June, to accelerate the presence of Henderson Global Investors in Australia. Formica added: “During the period, we continued to deliver on our strategy and attracted inflows from an increasingly global client base and product line. The acquisitions of Perennial Fixed Interest, Perennial Growth Management and 90 West will accelerate the growth of our Australian business and firmly establish our presence in this important market.”
In its latest interim business update, Henderson Global Investors, announced an underlying profit before tax from continuing operations of GBP 117.4, which represents a 29% increase compared to last year figure. Its underlying continuing diluted EPS rose to 8.9 p, from 6.8 p last June 2014; and its interim dividend rose from 2.60p per share last year to 3.10p.
Henderson Global Investors also announced a share buyback program to be initiated in the second half of 2015, with shares to the value of GBP 25.0 million to be purchased by year end. Finalizing its press release, Andrew Formica stated “We remain relatively positive on the market outlook, but are conscious that lingering investor caution during the northern hemisphere summer could affect flows across the industry in the third quarter. Nevertheless, Henderson remains well positioned. With strong sales momentum, increased brand recognition, excellent investment performance and disciplined investment in new initiatives.”
CC-BY-SA-2.0, FlickrPhoto: dpitmedia, Flickr, Creative Commons. A Bipolar Economy in USA: Strong Consumer Economy vs Weak Industrial Economy
Janet Yellen and her colleagues at the U.S. Federal Reserve (Fed) will spend the coming weeks and months contemplating the timing of an increase in short-term interest rates. While a cynic might describe the Fed’s behavior as “reactionary,” the Fed itself prefers the term “data-dependent.” As the Fed monitors incoming data, it will be searching for signs of the overall strength of the economy and any associated inflationary pressures. In so doing, the Fed is likely to find a two-speed economy, with the general health of the U.S. consumer improving rapidly, while the industrial side of the economy continues to struggle, says Eaton Vance in a report.
Part of the explanation for this seeming disconnect in economic data lies with energy prices. Over the past 12 months, the price of a barrel of oil has fallen 43%, from $105 to $60. This has led to a drop in average U.S. gasoline prices from approximately $3.70/gallon to $2.75/ gallon. With more money in their pockets, U.S. consumers (at least those who drive) are apparently feeling somewhat better about things. Accordingly, the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index recently neared its five-year high.
While the collapse in oil prices has been good news for the consumer, it’s bad news for many industrial companies. Oil and gas is an important end market for capital goods and equipment manufacturers. “We have been struck by how rapidly the energy sector cut expenses at the beginning of 2015. North American exploration and production companies tell us they have cut capital spending by roughly 35% this year. This has had a ripple effect throughout the supply chain, well beyond the direct exposure of oil and gas equipment. The softness in the industrial part of the economy has begun to manifest itself in the form of lower utilization rates at U.S. factories”.
Aside from lower energy prices, another big reason for the greater optimism on the part of many consumers is the recent improvement on the jobs front. After topping 10% in 2009, the U.S. unemployment rate has steadily fallen since then and is now at what many would consider a more “normal” level – 5.3% as of June 2015. Perhaps even more telling is that wage growth has finally begun to pick up after years of stagnation.
Bringing it back to equities
Understanding the relative health of different segments of the economy is important, but for equity investors, the key question is always, “What’s not priced in?” Looking at the trailing 12-month performance of the consumer discretionary and industrials sectors within the S&P 500 Index, it seems clear that the U.S. equity market has begun to figure things out, as consumer discretionary stocks have handily outperformed industrials over the past several months.
“This divergence of performance between the two sectors has led to widening valuation differentials: Consumer discretionary stocks were recently valued at 19.5x forward EPS estimates, whereas industrials stocks were only valued at 16.3x. In the Eaton Vance Large-Cap Value strategy, we have recently been cutting back our consumer discretionary exposure and have been adding to industrials. Meanwhile, in our growth strategies, we have recently had underweight positions in industrials. Our growth team has continued to be optimistic about the outlook for companies that it believes to be benefiting from strong, secular growth trends in the areas of consumer, technology and health care, among others”.
Regardless of where there may (or may not) be opportunities in today’s equity market, their view remains that true bargains are far from plentiful. However, that could change in the months ahead. “In the interim, we continue to believe investors should selectively favor shares of companies with skilled management teams that allocate capital well”.
