MONACO, June 29 (Reuters) – Scandinavian group Nordea’s funds unit is seeking to grow assets up to 5 percent this year by winning clients looking to prevent the erosion of their wealth by inflation, its chief executive said.

Allan Polack, head of Nordea Asset Management, which has 192 billion euros under management, said the firm aimed to expand internationally and compete with global management houses with its global equity and emerging markets products.

“I think we will pop up more on global institutional radar screens. We are becoming more international: coming originally from the Nordic region, being then European, being international now. We will be recognised more, and this is what we are working on,” he said on the sidelines of the Fund Forum event in Monaco.

Nordea is looking to capitalise from a greater willingness among investors to push into higher risk products as they scramble to protect their wealth as inflation runs well ahead of rock-bottom interest rates.

“Inflation is a challenge for investors; it is difficult to get real returns without taking risks, so we have to guide our clients to get well-diversified, controlled risk,” he said.

“One of the areas is credit. We think it is very important for our risk-averse clients … We also think it is important to get exposure to alternatives. It does not have to be a fancy hedge-fund strategy; it can be a low-risk absolute-return product,” he said.

He said niche investments such as farmland and forestry were further components to a diversified portfolio.

MONACO, June 29 (Reuters) – International fund managers see French proposals to roll over some Greek debt as the best way out of the eurozone crisis — and a vital step if contagion to other countries and new systemic threats are to be avoided.

Senior executives at international asset management houses running around $5 trillion in assets, who spoke to Reuters at the Fund Forum conference in Monaco this week, said they regard a “re-profiling” as inevitable for Greece.

“If there is a rollover deal — in the last few days momentum seems to be more in that direction — that’s a positive thing,” James Charrington, EMEA Chairman at BlackRock, told Reuters on the sidelines of the conference.

Investors were speaking as the Greek parliament prepared to vote on a sweeping and deeply unpopular austerity plan demanded by international creditors.

French banks, the most exposed to the Greek crisis, have reached an outline agreement to roll over holdings of maturing Greek bonds as part of a wider European plan to avoid sovereign default.

“There has to be a rescheduling, it has to happen … it is almost an economic necessity,” said Jim McCaughan, CEO of Principal Global Investors, the investment arm of U.S. Insurer Principal Financial Group .

McCaughan described the roll-over plan as “actually really interesting” because it would effectively work as a “default that does not trigger a CDS (credit default swap) event”.

MONACO, June 28 (Reuters) – The investment arm of U.S. insurer Principal Financial Group is looking to acquire a manager of global stocks and bonds and could buy one this year, its chief executive said.

“We are shopping. Do not be surprised if there is an announcement in the second half of the year,” the chief executive of Principal Global Investors, Jim McCaughlan, told Reuters on the sidelines of the Fund Forum conference in Monaco.

“What we are looking for is active asset management that will play well with our clients.”

Principal Global Investors, which had around $235 billion in global assets under management at the end of the first quarter, has set aside a $700 million war chest for mergers in 2011 and McCaughlan said the buying spree could continue into 2012.

“I would expect us to continue looking for acquisitions next year,” he said, but declined to say how much cash would be allocated to buyouts in 2012.

Principal Global Investors has spent $200 million this year on acquisitions that included a majority stake in hedge fund Finisterre Capital.

McCaughlan also said a further $200 million of the war chest would be spent on share buybacks in 2011, leaving about $300 million for acquisitions.

MONACO, June 28 (Reuters) – Rising inflation is giving active fund managers a chance to claw back business lost to low-cost funds after the market crisis cast doubts over their ability to make money for clients.

With low interest rates and rising inflation making cash-like products unappealing and market volatility diminishing the allure of cheap index tracking funds, many investors are being forced back into active funds.

“There is a tremendous opportunity for investment managers to provide propositions — for a fee — to deal with that risk. In a high and rising inflation scenario, active management ought to be really key,” said Tom Brown, head of investment management for the EMEA region at KPMG.

Research house Cerulli Associates estimated while global assets recovered to pre-crisis levels last year, revenues were still $10 billion short of 2007, partly because of a reallocation to passive from active management.

“Institutional investors are moving again to … very high conviction portfolios. That is because of their need for returns and that includes inflation (rises),” said Bernhard Langer, chief investment officer of global quantitative equity at Invesco.

Langer, who oversees $25 billion, told Reuters he was seeing especially strong demand for high conviction equity products in the United States.

Products aiming to deliver returns above markets while managing downside risks were in demand, said Elizabeth Corley, Europe chief executive of Allianz Global Investors and a speaker at the Fund Forum industry conference in Monaco.

MONACO, June 28 (Reuters) – UK fund management house Aberdeen Asset Management has ditched plans to find a partner in the United States and will instead concentrate on organic growth of its existing business, the chief executive said on Tuesday.

“We have really taken a decision not to make any acquisitions and really just grow the business organically,” Chief Executive Martin Gilbert told Reuters on the sidelines of the Fund Forum summit in Monaco on Tuesday.

“It is going to be hard to find anyone we could partner with, so I think we have decided to build our distribution in the U.S,” he said.

At the previous year’s conference Gilbert said he was seeking to repeat the kind of deal that has paid off for Aberdeen in Japan where Mitsubishi UFJ took a 17 percent stake in the company.

“The only country we have made a conscious decision to partner with is Japan, with Mitsubishi, because we think Japan is very, very difficult for western asset managers to break into, ” he said on Tuesday.

In May, Aberdeen posted a 54 percent rise in pre-tax profits for its first half of the year, but posted bigger than expected outflows.

Gilbert said that Aberdeen would use cash to pay down debts and will continue buying back shares, towards the end of the year and next year, noting the company had already used around 60 million pounds ($96 million) for buy-backs.

MONACO, June 28 (Reuters) – JP Morgan’s asset management arm aims to double the proportion of fixed income and alternatives in its assets in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, diversifying away from stocks to cushion against market shocks, its regional chief said.

Jamie Broderick, the managing director in charge of JP Morgan Asset Management’s EMEA unit, said he plans to reduce equities from well over 50 percent to around half of assets.

Fixed income and alternatives would account for 25 percent each, up from around 12.5 percent and 10 percent respectively, he said, adding the target could be achieved in three years.

“What I am really looking for is a book of business that has a balance between the different asset classes — equities, fixed income and alternatives — such that we are not vulnerable to … disruptions in any of those markets,” he said on the sidelines of the Fund Forum industry conference on Tuesday.

The fixed income expansion would involve long and short debt, credit, emerging markets, absolute return and high yield, he said. The alternatives would includes real estate, hedge funds and private equity.

“I think we can double alternatives, I think we can get a quarter of our book in alternatives, we would like to do that because of the diversification effect and the revenues characteristics are attractive,” Broderick said.

Broderick is also eying more business from institutional investors, which contribute 25 percent to the unit’s revenue at the moment.

MONACO, June 28 (Reuters) – The fund management arm of HSBC Holdings Plc is targeting an extra $90 billion in new assets, hoping to attract more wealth management customers who already do business with its banking arm, a senior executive said.

HSBC Global Asset Management aims to double the proportion of banking customers who allocate money to the funds unit from 20 percent currently to an industry average of 40 to 50 percent, Rudolf Apenbrink, the unit’s chief executive for EMEA, said.

“Industry norm is something we should achieve without problems,” Apenbrink said on the sidelines of the Fund Forum International 2011 conference. “We are working on it, it will take three to five years but this is something on which we are really focusing.”

The asset management subsidiary has $460 billion assets globally, of which about $90 billion comes from the wealth management business.

Apenbrink said exchange traded funds (ETF) are another growth area on which HSBC is concentrating, aiming to become a leading player in a rapidly growing sector.

“Our target is to become one of the top three to five players over the next five to 10 years globally. Now we are very small, we started two years or so ago,” he said.

He also said he is targeting emerging markets as a source of business growth, calling Africa a great region for opportunities, and said he is looking at Egypt, recovering from political unrest, as a potential area for expansion.

MONACO (Reuters) – Asset managers are eyeing investments in Iraq and other countries recovering from political instability, as the rise of markets such as Brazil and India make the exotic more acceptable.

Since the financial crisis, investors have sought to compensate for languid growth in the developed world by allocating more money to emerging markets, including Brazil, Russia, India and China — the BRIC group.

Managers are now turning to more exotic countries, categorized as immature frontier markets, rather than emerging markets, but which show features promising fast growth, such as resource wealth or young populations, including Iraq, Bangladesh and Egypt.

“We are interested in Iraq …the problem is that they do not have a set up to allow investors to come in,” said Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton Emerging Markets Group on the sidelines of the Fund Forum 2011 conference in Monaco.

Mobius added he is looking for opportunities in Bangladesh.

A report penned by Citi and published this year estimated that, over the next five years, Mongolia and Iraq will grow at double-digit rates, both driven by resource extraction and the latter by post-war reconstruction.

This year, Goldman Sachs launched its ‘Next 11′ fund investing in Pakistan as well as more stable Turkey and other economies identified as growth engines by Jim O’Neill, who coined the BRIC acronym.

MONACO, June 27 (Reuters) – Inflation in emerging markets could reach double digits, while economic growth this year will average 6 percent, according to Franklin Templeton’s veteran emerging markets investor Mark Mobius.

Economic growth and rising commodity and food prices are fuelling inflation in emerging economies, but Mobius said countries such as Brazil have in the past withstood inflation running into the thousands of percent.

“I would be surprised if it goes into high teens, but it could go into the teens,” Mobius, who is executive chairman of Franklin Templeton’s Emerging Markets Group, told Reuters on the sidelines of the Fund Forum conference in Monaco.

“What you have to focus on is (the) real interest rates environment, because if the inflation rate is above what people get in the banks, they will obviously have the tendency to move into equities,” he said.

Mobius, who oversees about $54 billion in assets at U.S. asset manager Franklin Resources , expects Asia to outperform this year in gross domestic product growth.

“GDP growth will be 5-6 percent (on) average for emerging markets in general, in Asia I think it will be one (percentage) point more than that,” he said.

The Institute of International Finance estimates private investment in emerging markets will hit around $1 trillion in 2011, and some analysts warn of asset bubble risks.

MONACO, June 27 (Reuters) – Inflation in emerging markets could reach double digits, while economic growth this year will average 6 percent, according to Franklin Templeton’s veteran emerging markets investor Mark Mobius.

Economic growth and rising commodity and food prices are fuelling inflation in emerging economies, but Mobius said these countries have previously withstood inflation running into the thousands of percent, such as in Brazil.

“I would be surprised that it goes into high teens, but it could go into the teens. I think most countries are going to try and keep it down,” Mobius, who is executive chairman of Franklin Templeton’s Emerging Markets Group, told Reuters on the sidelines of the Fund Forum conference in Monaco.

“What you have to focus on is (the) real interest rates environment, because if the inflation rate is above what people get in the banks, they will obviously have the tendency to move into equities,” he said.

Mobius, who oversees about $54 billion in assets at U.S. asset manager Franklin Resources , said growth in Asia will be a little faster than in other emerging markets.

“GDP growth will be 5-6 percent (on) average for emerging markets in general, in Asia I think it will be one (percentage) point more than that,” he said.

Private investments in emerging markets will hit around $1 trillion in 2011 — an estimate revised upward since January – according to the Institute of International Finance.