Barbara Rupf Bee. Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management Appoints Barbara Rupf Bee to Lead Distribution in EMEA
Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management (DeAWM) has announced that Barbara Rupf Bee has joined the firm as Head of Global Client Group EMEA.
Rupf Bee will lead a coverage team responsible for delivering DeAWM’s investment products and services to institutional and retail clients across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. She will also join the EMEA region and Global Client Group Executive Committees.
The Global Client Group team in EMEA comprises approximately 400 professionals. Across both asset and wealth management, the EMEA region accounts for approximately EUR 600 billion of DeAWM’s EUR 931 billion of assets under management.
Michele Faissola, Head of Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management, said: “Barbara is a perfect fit for our global firm. She has extensive experience across the full breadth of our product offering, including traditional and alternative investments, as well as developed and emerging markets. She also has a deep understanding of the needs of both retail and institutional investors. I am delighted to welcome her to the team.”
Based in Frankfurt, Rupf Bee reports to Dario Schiraldi, Head of Global Client Group. She brings almost 30 years’ experience to Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management. She was most recently Chief Executive Officer of Renaissance Asset Managers Group, a specialist asset manager focused on emerging Europe, Russia and Africa.
Before that she spent approximately 10 years with the HSBC Group. From 2007 to 2012, she served as Global Head of Institutional Sales for HSBC Global Asset Management. Previously she was CEO of HSBC Alternative Investments Ltd, the investment advisor to HSBC’s fund of hedge funds and institutional client portfolios. She began her career in private banking.
Peter Roemer, who previously held the role of Head of Global Client Group EMEA, has decided to leave Deutsche Bank to pursue other opportunities.
ING Investment Management International has announced that the ING (L) Renta Fund Global High Yield has surpassed the €5 billion mark in assets under management (AUM).
Despite Asian and European investors being increasingly worried about rising interest rates, high yield continues to attract positive flows with returns attractive compared to those available within the fixed income space. Furthermore, the sensitivity to changes in interest rates is low within high yield.
ING IM’s outlook for the asset class remains cautiously optimistic and the investment manager prefers spread over rates, reflecting the belief that the credit fundamentals remain healthy leading to low default rates. Furthermore, ING IM believes that the global economic recovery, particularly in the US, will lead to gradually rising interest rates.
Tim Dowling, Head of Global High Yield at ING Investment Management, said: “Our overall return expectation for the asset class is a return of around 5% which is near the current coupon yield levels. There is still some room for further spread tightening which is dampening the impact of rising interest rates. In contrast to Emerging Markets debt, the flows to the asset class remain supportive, particularly within the European space.”
Launched in 2001, the Global High Yield strategy is managed on a total return basis, combining credit analysis on individual issuers with top down views on regions, credit quality, and industry sectors to construct a diversified investment portfolio that balances avoiding defaults with investments that offer attractive upside potential.
Dowling continues: “At ING IM we prefer exposure to credit risk over the exposure to interest rate risk. Within Europe there is still a positive flow towards high yield while in the US we have seen some signs of rotation from fixed income to equities.”
Wikimedia CommonsPaquin también se une al Comité de Gestión de Banca Global y Soluciones de Inversión. . Lyxor AM nombra consejero delegado a Lionel Paquin
Lyxor Asset Management has announced the appointment of Lionel Paquin as CEO. He replaces in this position Inès de Dinechin who will leave the Group.
He joins as well the Management Committee of the Global Banking & Investor Solutions division.
Mr. Lionel Paquin was previously the Head of Lyxor Managed Accounts Platform since 2011. He has also held the position of Chief Risk Officer and Head of Internal Control at the firm, and was a member of Lyxor Executive Committee since September 2007.
Prior to this, Mr. Paquin has served as Managing Director and Principal Inspector of the “Inspection Générale” at the Societe Generale Group since June 2004. Mr. Paquin began his career in 1995 in the French Ministry of Finance as a high-ranking civil servant and held several positions within this Ministry.
Mr Lionel Paquin is a graduate of Ecole Polytechnique (1993) and ENSAE (1995).
Kevin Loome, cogestor del Henderson Horizon Global High Yield Bond Fund. Perspectivas favorables para la deuda high yield
High yield bonds have had a reasonably strong start to the year, particularly considering the fallout within the equity markets. For example, in January, the S&P 500, the index of leading shares in the US was down 3.5% over the month. In contrast, US high yield bonds, as represented by the BofA Merrill Lynch US High Yield Master II Total Return Index have returned 0.7% in US dollar terms.
A similar phenomenon exists in Europe where the MSCI Europe Total Return Index is down 1.8% in euro terms versus a rise of 1.0% in the BofA Merrill Lynch European Currency High Yield Total Return Index.
Driving the positive performance in high yield has been the decline in yields on core government bonds. Bond prices move inversely to directional moves in yields, so when yields fall, prices rise. The yield on the 5-year US Treasury fell more than 20 basis points in January whilst the yield on the 10-year US Treasury fell more than 30 basis points. This is important for the high yield markets because this is the maturity part of the yield curve around which high yield securities are priced.
The other major influence on bond prices is credit risk: this reflects individual corporate strengths together with broader macroeconomic forces on an issuer’s capacity to meet their repayment obligations to bondholders. There is a danger that investors may extrapolate the recent weakness in some of the economic data statistics such as the soft non-farm payrolls growth in the US as less an aberration (related to harsh winter weather) and more of a turning point signalling loss of economic momentum. Our view is that the temporary weakness in developed market economic data will abate.
More concerning has been the weakness in emerging markets where slower Chinese growth and volatility in emerging asset prices (partly due to liquidity draining from emerging markets in response to the US Federal Reserve tapering its asset purchases) has led to negative sentiment towards emerging market debt and equities.
So far, the emerging market fallout has not led to contagion to credit markets, although there have been outflows from Exchange Traded Funds (ETF). In the past, we have seen that during bouts of volatility, the ETF market has been a lot more closely correlated with equity markets than the cash bond high yield market.
This suits us because we are primarily invested in cash bonds from developed market issuers. In fact, fund flows support the notion that in volatile times, investor preference is for bonds over equities. The global mutual fund data flows from BoA Merrill Lynch for the first five weeks of 2014 show an outflow from equity funds and positive flows into bond funds, with government bonds, investment grade corporates and high yield all benefiting. The exception is emerging market debt, which remains in outflow.
Flows can be notoriously volatile, however, and our focus is on the cues that drive medium to long-term performance – valuations, fundamentals and liquidity. On all three factors, we believe the outlook for high yield bonds remains fair.
Valuations within high yield remain attractive. On a historical basis, metrics are marginally rich but only slightly above historical averages. On a relative basis, high yield bonds continue to look inexpensive when yield spreads are set against government bonds, investment grade bonds and expected default rates.
At the fundamental level, corporate earnings have been good. By 12 February 2014, almost 76% of S&P 500 companies that had announced earnings in the most recent reporting season had beaten expectations and the companies we talk to are generally upbeat. What we do not want to see, however, is optimism spilling over into shareholder-friendly/bondholder-unfriendly corporate behaviour. We have noticed, particularly in the US, which is at a more advanced stage in the economic cycle to Europe, a tick-up in more aggressive uses of high yield issuance proceeds, such as for acquisitions. However, as the chart shows more aggressive uses of proceeds (red shadings) are still far below the danger levels of 2005-7.
In terms of liquidity, the outlook remains encouraging. There is approximately US$25 billion of new US high yield issuance in February and that calendar is spread across bonds of different sizes, industries and credit ratings. Such breadth is usually a sign of a healthy market.
For now, our expectations are unchanged that global high yield can generate mid-single digit total returns in 2014, although the strength of that figure will depend on the quality of security selection. For our part, we continue to favour single B and CCC high yield bonds, and some of the smaller issuers where we believe fundamental research is able to identify value.
Kevin Loome, co-manager of the Henderson Horizon Global High Yield Bond Fund
Brickell World Plaza, where Deutsche is based in Miami. Former Barclays’ Executives Canalda, Meyerhans, Muñoz and De La Lama Join Deutsche Bank in Miami
Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management has signed on four former Barclays W&IM professionals to join their team in Miami. Diego Canalda, Roman Meyerhans, Narciso Munoz and Diego De La Lama joined Deutsche Bank Securities at the end of last January, as bank sources confirmed to Funds Society.
This move by Barclays conforms to the new strategyof reducing the complexity of certain business areas, which was made public in September 2013. Since then, and as part of this strategy, the division of W&IM Barclays is proceeding to reduce the number of regions, among which are those of Latin America and the Caribbean, in which it provides services to clients. Last September, Barclays announced the closure of 100 private banking centers, five booking centers, and the downsizing of its workforce worldwide.
Two years earlier, in 2011, the British company threw itself entirely into increasing its client base in Latin America and the Caribbean, and hired a number of U.S. professionals for the task, including Narciso Muñoz, amongst others.
Canalda, with over 15 years’ experience, assumed the post of Managing Director. Before joining Barclays Wealth in Miami as director in 2008, he worked at Lehman Brothers for ten years.
Meanwhile, Muñoz, CFA with 20 years’ experience in the financial sector, worked at HSBC Private Bank International before joining Barclays Wealth Management in Miami in October 2011. Muñoz, part of the group who joined Barclays at a time when the British bank was firmly committed to boosting its Latin American business, joins Deutsche Bank Securities as Director.
De la Lama, also from Barclays W&IM, will assume the duties of Assistant Vice President. De la Lama has also worked at HSBC Private Bank, UBS Wealth Management and Intercam Securities.
Deutsche Asset & WM provides service to 180,000 clients from 130 offices in APAC, Europe and the Americas. It has 298,000 million dollars in assets under management from private banking clients, and the company employs 900 professionals dedicated to private banking and high-net-worth clients.
Income investors generally look at reliable yield stocks or firms with the ability to grow their dividend over time, or some combination of the two. By definition, according to Stephen Thornber, fund manager at Threadneedle, this either means investing in businesses that can generate plenty of cash to return to shareholders over time or in companies that can become decent and dependable dividend payers in the future. Neither of those, he highlights, are a bad place to be. “It does require a long-term perspective, however, and consequently you won’t usually find income investors following the latest investment fads.” Thornber lists the following ten reasons to invest in global equity income:
1. Equity income investors take a long-term perspective.
3. Income strategies have outperformed strong-performing equity markets in the last few years. But remember that dividends (and dividend growth) drive total real returns from equities – and could become even more important in a low growth/low return world.
4. Income stands up as an investment approach in its own right.
Burns Supper organized by Aberdeen in Miami. Aberdeen Commemorates the Scottish Tradition by Holding a "Burns Supper" in Miami
For the third consecutive year, Aberdeen Asset Management organized its characteristic “Burns’ Supper” in Miami last week. The firm’s clients who attended the event enjoyed an evening in which the whiskey and the bagpipes were followed by the toasts to the eighteenth century Scottish poet Robert Burns, which was the aim of the occasion.
Gary Marshall, who until this year headed Aberdeen Asset Management for the Americas, acted as “master of ceremonies” in the purest Scottish tradition. Marshall will soon return to the UK to continue to develop management tasks for the firm, while David Steyntakes overtakes as managing director of the Aberdeen Asset Management team in the Americas region, as was reported by the company in late 2013.
Aberdeen Asset Management has its corporate headquarters in the city of Aberdeen in northeastern Scotland, where its roots date back to 1875, although the current asset management company was established in 1983.
“I am delighted to witness how Aberdeen’s presence in Miami is reinforced year after year, thanks to the support of an excellent team and of course, thanks to your support as clients,” explained Gary Marshall to his guests. “Once again we gather on a date close to January 25th, the birthday of Scottish poet Robert Burns, to resume this tradition which is an important part of Scottish culture, and essential to our overall corporate identity.”
“Aberdeen has closed 2013, by, amongst other achievements, becoming the first European independent asset manager in terms of assets under management listed on the stock exchange, following SWIP’s acquisition, with over half a trillion dollars in assets under management, of which more than 75 billion are in the Americas region.”
During the dinner, which included the traditional Scottish “haggis”, the guests enjoyed a Whiskey Tasting commented by Nicholas M. Pollacchi, Whisky Master, who has worked as Public Relations’ Director at The MacAllan and The Glenrothes, two prestigious Scottish distilleries. Since 2010 he has his own company, The Whisky Dog, which organizes whiskey tasting events in the U.S.
Several members of Aberdeen’s team in the U.S, London, and Scotland, both of the commercial division and of its investment team accompanied the guests during the cocktail and dinner, which was enlivened by Piper Robert Ritchie, Canadian born piper of Scottish origin and a resident of South Florida since 1956.
Rodrigo Nuñez Aguilar. Natixis Global AM nombra nuevo director de Cuentas Globales para Latam y EE.UU. Offshore
Natixis Global Asset Management (NGAM) has announced the appointment of Rodrigo Nunez Aguilar as Director of Global Key Accounts, Latin America and U.S. Offshore.
Nunez Aguilar, based in New York, will manage U.S. Offshore and Latin America fund distribution sales teams and focus on strengthening NGAM’s relationships with cross-border fund distributors in the United States and in Latin America. He will report to Sophie del Campo, head of Latin America for NGAM International, and Ed Farrington, head of U.S. Offshore Sales.
“Rodrigo will play a critical role in linking our existing U.S. Offshore business to our growing presence in Latin America,” said Hervé Guinamant, President and Chief Executive Officer of Natixis Global Asset Management – International Distribution. “Latin America is one of the fastest growing fund markets in the world, and we know that our unique approach to portfolio construction will strongly resonate.”
Nunez Aguilar has over 17 years of asset management industry experience, most recently as head of funds and advisory sales for Latin America and U.S. Offshore at Barclays. He previously served as New York-based executive director for Latin America and U.S. Offshore Distribution at Morgan Stanley Investment Management and in roles at ING Barings and Bank Boston.
Nunez Aguilar holds an MBA from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University and a B.A. in economics from the Universidad Catolica Argentina. He holds FINRA Series 7 and 63 licenses and is a CFA charterholder.
During my last research trip in November, we visited mostly consumer-facing companies in Japan where we took the opportunity to pose two key questions to the management teams we met. The first was—“Are you planning to increase prices for products or services after Japan’s consumption tax hike (scheduled for April)?” And secondly: “Will you raise employee wages?”
To our surprise, many of the firms we met with said it would be difficult to increase prices for their products or services. While they seemed concerned about the rising costs of imports due to the weakening yen, they were also wary of meeting resistance from their customers, or possibly losing customers to competitors who may keep prices more stable. They also said they were quite reluctant to increase base salaries for their employees, noting that they would first need greater confidence that a more permanent, fundamental turnaround was occurring in Japan’s economy.
Opinion writer and Waseda University Professor Norihiro Kato has argued that Japan’s younger generations, those who came of age after the bursting of the country’s economic bubble, have never known what a booming economy feels like. They have not experienced inflation or rising wages. “They are accustomed to being frugal,” he wrote in The New York Times. “Today’s youths, living in a society older than any in the world, are the first since the late 19th century to feel so uneasy about the future.”
I suspect a similar trait has been embedded somewhat into parts of corporate Japan, especially in consumer-facing companies. Like Japan’s younger generations, many Japanese companies also have not experienced rising prices, regular wage increases and investments rather than savings over the last two decades; some firms may have experienced only the same sense of frugality and caution as the youth in its society.
Shaking this mentality of a deflationary environment may be key to what some parts of Japan Inc. need to help boost its economy. The central bank can overcome this obstacle by sticking to its guns on its monetary policy, creating expectations of higher nominal GDP. Fortunately, since the beginning of this year some larger Japanese companies have already announced wage or price increases. Also, some recent statistics in Japan, such as an increase in the consumer price index and the availability of jobs (measured as the ratio of job offers per job seeker), may pressure companies to raise wages. We hope to see more signs that Japan appears to be finding a virtuous cycle of economic recovery and growth.
Kara Yoon, Research Analyst at Matthews Asia
The views and information discussed represent opinion and an assessment of market conditions at a specific point in time that are subject to change. It should not be relied upon as a recommendation to buy and sell particular securities or markets in general. The subject matter contained herein has been derived from several sources believed to be reliable and accurate at the time of compilation. Matthews International Capital Management, LLC does not accept any liability for losses either direct or consequential caused by the use of this information. Investing in international and emerging markets may involve additional risks, such as social and political instability, market illiquidity, exchange-rate fluctuations, a high level of volatility and limited regulation. In addition, single-country funds may be subject to a higher degree of market risk than diversified funds because of concentration in a specific geographic location. Investing in small- and mid-size companies is more risky than investing in large companies, as they may be more volatile and less liquid than large companies. This document has not been reviewed or approved by any regulatory body.
Giordano Lombardo, Group Chief Investment Officer at Pioneer Investments, opens this month’s CIO Letter quoting Marcus Aurelius: “Look beneath the surface; let not the several quality of a thing nor its worth escape thee”. The subject of this letter is risk. An extract of the main risks that may break the support for risky assets, according to Lombardo, follow. You may access the complete document through the attached pdf file or through this link.
Walking on a Tightrope (Amid the Credibility of Central Banks and the Risk of Crisis)
The first month of the year has confirmed the main scenario presented in our latest Outlook: developed countries’ economies are gathering momentum and Central Banks retain accommodative monetary policies, extending support for risky assets. However, there is no shortage of reasons for being careful going forward.
Emerging Markets stand out as the weakest spot, as most investors refrain from entering countries with high current- account deficits (Argentina, Turkey and other Asian countries are again under the spotlight) or with political uncertainties putting the skids on overdue economic reforms.
None of the sources of volatility spotted recently has dramatically changed our constructive view on risky assets, especially equities. However, in this letter, I believe it is worth focusing on the main risks that may undermine our investment strategy, notably a change in investors’ expectations on monetary policies and the deflation, particularly in Europe:
– The main risks to an investment strategy favoring risky assets are a change in investors’ expectations on monetary policies and deflation in Europe. Playing with market expectations is not an easy task. In our view, the FED is walking on a tightrope and the risk of disappointing the markets is not negligible.
– The second main risk to our base scenario is deflation. Deflation is hardly a healthy condition for the economy: it tends to defer consumption and investments, to aggravate the debt burden and dampens economic growth as a result. Being in a low inflation/disinflation scenario or in outright deflation can make a significant difference for financial markets. Equities tend to anticipate the deflation, thus proving how important is the role of expectations and the credibility of the Central Bank.
The place where the deflation risk appears to be more tangible is Euroland. In the Eurozone, the drop of inflation below 1% hides a high dispersion in individual data.
The ECB needs to decide what is the lesser evil: avoiding deflation in the periphery, while allowing for some inflation in the core, or sticking to an “anti- inflationary” orthodoxy, which is going to kill the hopes of an economic recovery. We believe that the market has not fully realized nor priced the risk that the ECB has no plan to counter deflation and that political disagreement will lead to a prolonged standoff on the course of action.
Another source of risk to our global scenario is a marked slowdown in the world economy, coming from increasing turmoil in Emerging Markets, as we briefly mentioned. As we have seen, the risk is that they become “victims” of a change in the US monetary policy.
You may access Pioneer Investment’s full CIO Letter through this link or by accessing the pdf attached at the top left corner of this page.
