Fund Times 01 - 05 February

Artemis returns to owner management; Aberdeen announces fund mergers; Jupiter announces new Chief Investment Officer; FSA fines ex-Blue bay manager £140,000; AEGON launches macro fund; Macquarie fund fails get off the ground.

Mark Laidlaw 5 February, 2010 | 10:41AM
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Artemis returns to owner management
US-based manager Affiliated Managers Group (AMG) announced this week that it had agreed to purchase Artemis from BNP Paribas for an undisclosed sum. This is probably the best possible news for investors. AMG is seen as a hands-off owner and allows fund companies a large degree of autonomy. Although AMG will be the majority owner, a sizable equity stake in Artemis will be owned by senior management. This strengthens the alignment with shareholders and AMG should provide a greater deal of clarity for Artemis compared to the last few years where the firm has had ABN AMRO/Fortis/BNP Paribas as owners. This is the second UK investment for AMG following on from its 2004 acquisition of emerging market specialist Genesis Investment Management.

Aberdeen announces fund mergers
Aberdeen will be merging away both of their UK & European Opportunities funds. The £42 million in UK Opportunities will merge into the £124 million UK Growth, and the combined vehicle will be renamed UK Equity. The same is happening with the £5.8 million European Opportunities which will be absorbed by the £224 European Growth and be known as European Equity. This is sensible as it streamlines Aberdeen’s fund range. One positive consequence of the move is that Aberdeen has indicated the TERs’ of both merged funds should come down. At the time of writing UK Growth, European Growth and European Opportunities were rated standard, whilst Aberdeen UK Opportunities was rated inferior. Given the fact the funds operate on the same investment process, we don’t envisage any changes to our Morningstar Qualitative ratings for the surviving entities, but we will monitor the situation. The changes are expected to be completed by 12 March.

Jupiter announces new Chief Investment Officer
A management re-shuffle at Jupiter has seen John Chatfield-Roberts promoted to the position of CIO. Chatfield-Roberts has been at the firm since 2001 as head of the firm’s Merlin fund of funds team, which will remain unchanged. Current CIO Edward Bonham Carter who had the dual CIO/CEO will remain as the firm’s Chief Executive Officer. Bonham carter says by focusing purely on the CEO role will allow the firm to further develop its growing business and extending its international reach. We’d expect this to have little impact as far as investors are concerned.

FSA fines ex-Blue bay manager £140,000
Simon Treacher formerly fund manager of BlueBay Asset Management Emerging Markets Fund has been fined £140,000 and barred from the industry by the Financial Services Authority for altering valuation information and misleading FSA investigators. Between August and October 2008, Treacher ‘cut and pasted’ different figures onto broker quotes which were used to value assets in the fund. This amounted to mis-marking and artificially boosted the value of his fund. The firm discovered the irregularities and reported them to the FSA. Subsequently the Emerging Market Total Return fund was shut down in Nov. 2008. In the aftermath BlueBay paid $650,000 compensation to disadvantaged investors. The FSA did not lay blame at the feet of the firm.

AEGON launches macro fund
AEGON has announced it is launching a Global Absolute Return Fund targeting investors seeking global macro exposure. The fund will invest in derivative and non-derivative assets taking both long and short positions. Olaf Van Den Heuvel, Head of Investment Strategy will be managing the fund. He’ll be supported by a team of five in the Netherlands as well as the firm’s 10 member multi-asset group who are based in both the UK and the Netherlands. Minimum investment is 100,000 Euros and the fund will have both Sterling and Euro share classes. A performance fee of 20% for any outperformance over three month Euribor+ 7.5% is applied.

Macquarie fund fails get off the ground
Macquarie Funds Group, the asset management arm of Australian-listed Macquarie Group was unable to raise sufficient funds and as a result has delayed the launch of its first structured product in the UK market. In Nov. 2009 the firm had unveiled a six-year global infrastructure growth plan backed by UBS and linked to the S&P Global Infrastructure Index. However the fund generated lower than expected investor subscriptions. The firm said the short-offer period could have potentially impacted subscriptions, but is encouraged by investor interest and will consider launching further structured products in the coming year.

Morningstar qualitative ratings and reports issued this week.
Morningstar issued new qualitative ratings and reports on a number of funds available to UK investors this week, including Thames River Distribution, Insight Investments Diversified target Return, Schroder ISF Global Property Securities, Artemis UK Growth and Lazard Global Equity Income. Click here to see the full list.

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Mark Laidlaw  Mark Laidlaw is a senior analyst, manager research for Morningstar.

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