LONDON, Aug 19 (Reuters) – Fund manager Jupiter put a brave face on the financial market turmoil that has rattled its core British customers, saying it was pushing ahead with plans to expand in Europe and attract more wealthy clients.

Jupiter, one of the UK’s largest retail investment fund managers with around 84 percent of assets invested in equities, said on Friday that first-half net inflows to its funds fell to 676 million pounds ($1.1 million) from 814 million a year earlier.

Investor confidence had taken a knock and “significant uncertainty remains,” it said.

“Sentiment is definitively more nervous, it would be surprising if it wasn’t. I would be quite amazed,” Chief Executive Edward Bonham Carter told Reuters in an interview.

Rival fund house Henderson forecast a near-term decline in investment from retail clients, when it published results earlier this week.

Jupiter is pushing ahead with medium-term plans to diversify its client base, seeking more wealthy investors and expanding into Europe.

The moves “over the course of this year and into next year,” will start with a new office in Switzerland, Bonham Carter said.

LONDON, Aug 17 (Reuters) – Anglo-Australian fund manager Henderson is bracing for further volatility in global stock markets and the challenge of keeping cash flowing in as retail investors fight shy of investments for a few months.

Chief Executive Andrew Formica said the dramatic stock falls seen in recent weeks had spooked investors, and its effects would not be forgotten in a hurry.

“Even if markets return to the highs of the year, we think the psychological effects of market movements seen in the last few weeks will likely deter retail investors in particular from investing at a similar pace (to that) we have seen over the past few years,” Formica told a conference call.

Henderson reported 86.4 million pounds ($141.8 million) underlying profits before tax for the first six months of the year on Wednesday, in line with its own estimates published last month, and said it would pay interim dividends of 1.95 pence per share, compared with 1.85 pence paid last year.

Previously reported assets under management were confirmed at 74.4 billion pounds.

Analysts at Numis expected interim dividends to amount to 2 pence, while their counterparts at Peel Hunt have forecast dividends to remain unchanged.

Retail investors accounted for the only inflows the group recorded in the first half of the year. It attracted 285 million pounds net inflows from clients such as retirement savers and private individuals, while institutional investors and insurer Phoenix withdrew around 3.1 billion pounds.

LONDON (Reuters) – The 10 largest European equity funds shed an aggregated 7 percent of their assets in the first two weeks of August as panic about the future of the euro zone rocked markets, leaving many scrambling to persuade clients not to redeem their stakes.

The 10 biggest European equity funds, running an indicative 23.1 billion euros ($33.3billion) in assets at end-July, had lost a total of 1.6 billion euros by August 12, Lipper data showed, reflecting a loss of confidence in the health of the region’s banks and the ability of policymakers to heal them.

Managers presiding over asset falls are now trying to avert the threat of client withdrawals, as tumbling share prices slash the value of the assets they run.

“I am just like every other long-only fund manager. No money is going into Europe,” said John Arnold, who manages the AGF European Equity Class Fund, which was down about 10 percent in the week to August 5 after hits on key holdings like Societe Generale and BNP Paribas.

The fund posted a 1.59 percent gain in the week to Aug 12.

“You are dealing in a void where most fund managers, apart from their dividend income, are facing redemption. The long-only managers are in a sense trending out not by intention but because simply that is what the clients are doing,” he said.

Fidelity’s European Growth fund, the largest of the 10 with 7.38 billion euros in assets, shed 10.8 percent of its assets in the first week of August, before rebounding 4.96 percent in the following week.

LONDON, Aug 11 (Reuters) – Long-only fund managers are pulling their money out of euro zone banks and sovereigns, worried the region’s monetary union has neither the political cohesion nor financial firepower to prevent a re-run of the 2008 credit crunch.

Even without a formal fiscal union in place, investors say they are starting to see all euro zone states as financially accountable for one another’s solvency, sparking a stampede to economies with greater freedom to plot their way out of the crisis, like Switzerland, Britain, the United States and Scandinavia.

“We have colossal debt burdens in some jurisdictions, colossal budget deficits and an inability to forge political unity at an early stage to short-circuit fears,” Stephen Snowden, fixed income manager at 48 billion pound funds firm AEGON Asset Management, said.

French banks already reeling from writedowns on troubled sovereign debt suffered a dramatic sell-off on Wednesday amid fears the country could be called on again to bankroll rescue packages for the likes of Italy and Spain.

Those falls came a day after spreads on German credit default swaps widened beyond their UK equivalent for the first time, reflecting worry that Europe’s largest economy was being dragged down by its efforts to support the euro zone laggards.

Sales of French bank paper and stock — as well as those of other major lenders seen to be infected by exposure to the Euro zone — look likely to accelerate as long-only investors hurry to offload risk, fund managers said.

Snowden said AEGON had slashed exposure to banks in its Investment Grade Bond fund by more than a quarter in the past four weeks. He cited BNP Paribas , Unicredit , Credit Agricole and Belgium’s KBC among its recent disposals.

LONDON (Reuters) – Investors are hoarding gold and cash as a perfect storm brews in global equities and credit markets.

Volatile equity markets coupled with the growing risk of sovereign bond default are sparking a rush to defensive assets, fund managers and investment strategists said, with little sign of sanctuary seen in any major global economy.

In an environment where people are “simply looking for the least ugly investment,” gold offers a way to preserve purchasing power in the face of market stress and high inflation, said Neil Dwane, chief investment officer at RCM, a unit of Allianz Global Investors.

“It feels like Europe is firmly in the line of fire but it could quite easily be usurped by worries over the U.S. by the end of the week,” he said, flagging doubts about the optimism underpinning Asian investment as a hedge on Western woe.

European shares were hit on Monday by news that 24 European lenders either failed or nearly failed stress tests aimed at identifying those too weak to survive prolonged recession or a new financial market shock.

Data published by EPFR Global, which tracks flows in and out of funds running $15 trillion of assets, showed enthusiasm for gold helped drive the biggest inflows into commodities funds for 14 weeks in the week to July 15, when all other 17 major equity and sector fund groups saw outflows.

For those who can’t afford gold as prices soar to record new heights, cash is another option for investors unwilling to ride out equity markets or unable to achieve returns from high-quality debt.

LONDON (Reuters) – Euro zone bond funds are pointing the finger at speculators for kickstarting a shock sell-off in Italian government debt that they may well be forced to join if spreads continue to widen at such an alarming pace.

Fund firms running more than 1 trillion euros in fixed income assets are wrestling with fears for the security of their exposure to Italian sovereign bonds amid fears Europe’s third largest economy could succumb to contagion from the debt woes of Greece, Portugal and Ireland.

These investors, who are major buyers of European sovereign debt, told Reuters they have few doubts about Italy’s solvency but the slow progress of Greek bailout talks was eroding confidence in the economic stability of almost any Euro zone member.

“I don’t think we are really looking at Italy and Spain and maybe Belgium in isolation any more. We’re really looking more at the EU area as a whole because I think we are fighting for the survival of the euro,” Sylvain de Ruijter, head of core fixed income investments at ING Investment Management said.

“We have only sold down a very small percentage of our Italian and Spanish debt exposure but it is fair to say that we are reviewing the level of ownership of these credits for all our clients,” de Ruijter said.

Yields on 10-year Italian government debt jumped 30 basis points to break 6 percent for the first time since 1997 on Tuesday, edging closer to a 7 percent threshold after which Italy is broadly seen to lose the ability to finance itself, analysts reckon.

The jittery marketplace for Euro zone sovereign bonds has provided the perfect incubator for hedge fund bets on ballooning spreads and subsequent currency movements, the fund managers said, forcing the cost of insuring Italian debt against default to record heights.

LONDON, July 7 (Reuters) – Emerging market equity specialist Charlemagne posted a 5.5 percent fall in assets under management in the January-June period, as investor appetite for its core offering was dented by sharp stock market swings.

Charlemagne, which manages mutual funds as well as hedge funds investing in Africa, Asia and Latin America, booked net outflows of $94 million from its investments range, following withdrawals from its mutual funds, institutional mandates and advisory ranges.

The Occo hedge funds range and specialist business attracted inflows of $126 million. Charlemagne had posted larger net outflows in the first quarter of 2011 than the whole of last year.

Negative markets contributed $55 million to the first-half fall in net assets, meaning the company had $3.29 billion under management at end-June, down 5.5 percent since end-2010 but up 19.2 percent year-on-year.

Assets under management levels fell “slightly short of … expectations”, analysts at Singer Capital Markets said, noting flows had been negative across the emerging markets industry.

Charlemagne shares were unchanged at 0740 GMT.

The MSCI emerging market equity index was volatile over the six months to end-June, hitting a low in February.

LONDON (Reuters) – BlackRock (BLK.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the world’s largest fund manager, is planning two new funds investing in pan-European and global real estate in the next 3-5 years after recruiting a new property head, a senior executive told Reuters.

James Charrington, BlackRock’s chairman for the EMEA region, told Reuters in an interview the company was planning to invest in buying buildings when the time came for expansion.

“We have a very strong … team in UK real estate. We do not have a global product and we do not have a pan-European real estate product. Do we have a mission to do it? Absolutely.”

“We need to build the infrastructure that can support that product,” he said, noting BlackRock had appointed LaSalle’s (JLL.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Asia Pacific head Jack Chandler to drive the unit’s development. Charrington declined to give BlackRock’s fund-raising target for the new funds.

As part of the real estate unit’s expansion, Blackrock — which manages $3.65 trillion in overall assets — may also make a foray into real estate debt.

In the two years to 2013, the global commercial real estate funding gap — the difference between debt needed for refinancing and the money available — fell to $202 billion. But there is a growing appetite for funds specialising in senior or junior property debt.

“As a big fund manager in debt markets, we would potentially be interested in it (real estate debt). It could easily be both senior and junior, I would not rule out (either)… the first step was to bring in a head of real estate,” Charrington said, referring to Chandler.

LONDON (Reuters) – BlackRock (BLK.N: Quote, Profile, Research), the world’s largest fund manager, is planning two new funds investing in pan-European and global real estate in the next 3-5 years after recruiting a new property head, a senior executive told Reuters.

James Charrington, BlackRock’s chairman for the EMEA region, told Reuters in an interview the company was planning to invest in buying buildings when the time came for expansion.

“We have a very strong … team in UK real estate. We do not have a global product and we do not have a pan-European real estate product. Do we have a mission to do it? Absolutely.”

“We need to build the infrastructure that can support that product,” he said, noting BlackRock had appointed LaSalle’s (JLL.N: Quote, Profile, Research) Asia Pacific head Jack Chandler to drive the unit’s development. Charrington declined to give BlackRock’s fund-raising target for the new funds.

As part of the real estate unit’s expansion, Blackrock — which manages $3.65 billion (2.27 billion pounds) in overall assets — may also make a foray into real estate debt.

In the two years to 2013, the global commercial real estate funding gap — the difference between debt needed for refinancing and the money available — fell to $202 billion. But there is a growing appetite for funds specialising in senior or junior property debt.

“As a big fund manager in debt markets, we would potentially be interested in it (real estate debt). It could easily be both senior and junior, I would not rule out (either)… the first step was to bring in a head of real estate,” Charrington said, referring to Chandler.