Funds Hub
Money managers under the microscope
from Global Investing:
Funds will find a chill Wind in the Willows: Lipper
"Asset managers are emerging from their comfortable burrow to face a battery of lights."
Sheila Nicoll, Director of Conduct Policy at Britain's Financial Services Authority (FSA), had perhaps been reading Kenneth Grahame before her recent speech, and her words are likely to have sent a chilly wind through the willows of the UK funds industry.
The warning "poop poop" being sounded by the regulator has been getting louder and louder. Indeed the FSA may even be traveling faster than Labour Party leader Ed Miliband, who has recently suggested that he would impose a 1 percent cap on pension charges.
It was not so long ago that the FSA took a very different approach and removed its rules on excessive charges on the basis that "there may be no appropriate benchmarks" to determine this. They went so far as to say that "we do not act as a price regulator, and we do not consider it appropriate for us to take such a role."
LIPPER: Are ETFs in trouble?
By Detlef Glow, Head of EMEA Research at Thomson Reuters fund research firm Lipper. The views expressed are his own.
Exchange traded funds (ETFs) have found themselves under ever more scrutiny from regulators and market participants this year and expectations are that new rules for the sector are just a matter of time.
Lipper: Fighting fragmentation
By Merieme Boutayeb, Research Analyst at Lipper. The views expressed are her own.
The European investment funds industry has been reshaped over the last 25 years by EU directives designed to improve efficiency, strengthen competitiveness and boost distribution. However, the latest battle to reduce fragmentation of the industry is looking like a hard one to win.
Socially useful?
Andrew Baker, boss of hedge fund industry lobbyists AIMA, has taken umbrage at the “unsavoury terms” used to refer to his members.
He doesn’t like the biblical monikers of locusts or parasites and gets very prickly indeed at accusations the Mayfair money men might be socially useless.
Morning line-up: Asian solar, bonds and correlations
News and views on the fund industry from Reuters and elsewhere:
Lands of the rising sun – Reuters
Bonds. Bubble? – Telegraph
Chasing the dream – Reuters
Don’t take it personally.. – Belfast Telegraph
New bid to solve hedge fund rules row – Reuters
Correlation swaps.. – FT Alphaville
Morning line-up: USS, Gambhir and the US take on regulation
News and views on the fund industry from Reuters and elsewhere:
USS prepares for tough call – Reuters
Gambhir likes UK, Germany – CityWire
Wall Street still in the hedge fund game – Reuters
Market reprieve robbed clients of change – Reuters
Rasmussen gives the bankers both barrels
Poul Nyrup Rasmussen’s visits to London are always value for money, and today was no exception as the president of the party of European socialists launched into a tirade against banker bonuses.
“When I listen to you it’s like you’re living in another world,” he told an audience of financial executives and journalists at a Chatham House conference after a number of questions from the floor suggested EU plans for tighter regulation might be counter-productive.
Morning line-up
News and views on the hedge fund sector from Reuters and elsewhere:
Morgan Stanley to raise capital for hedge fund clients – Reuters
GLG Partners opens offices in Asia - Reuters
Cadbury deal to start debate on hedge funds’ role in takeovers – Times
Pension funds warn of €1.5 bln regulation cost
As the debate over the EU’s controversial and highly-politicized AIFM proposals on hedge funds and private equity rumbles on, there emerges more evidence that boosts opponents of the plans.
An article in Global Pensions highlights a letter to the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs from Dutch pension funds and asset managers, saying the implementation of the AIFM in its current form could cost 1.5 bln euros annually.
