Asset Management

Activist investor RBR Capital Advisors, supported by Gaël de Boissard, a former Credit Suisse investment bank co-head on Tuesday confirmed it has built a position in Credit Suisse and has been talking with the Swiss bank’s management. RBR Capital Advisors will reveal its plan later in the week at a conference in New York, the Financial Times reported.

According to the report, the plan will offer the argument for a three-way split of Credit Suisse into an investment bank, an asset management group and a wealth manager accommodating the Switzerland-based bank’s retail and business banking operations.

Northern Trust, an asset manager established in Chicago in 1889, has closed its acquisition of UBS Asset Management’s fund administration servicing units in Luxembourg and Switzerland, further underpinning its growth strategy for Continental Europe.

The acquisition positions Northern Trust as a leading administrator by assets in Switzerland and a top 10 asset servicing provider in Luxembourg. Northern Trust welcomes more than 200 new employees and establishes a new European office in Basel, Switzerland, as a result of the acquisition.

David Perry plans to end the main operations of TeamCo Advisers LLC by early 2018 and ultimately shut the firm, he told Reuters in an interview, making his San Francisco-based business the latest casualty in the struggling fund of hedge funds industry.

Firms like TeamCo that manage portfolios of hedge funds for wealthy individuals and institutional investors have come under pressure as the performance of their underlying investments has lagged, making it harder for them to justify their extra layer of fees.

Swiss voters have thrown out plans to reform the creaking state pension system, highlighting the difficulties even prosperous western European countries face adapting welfare regimes to cope with ageing populations.

Authorities pushing the first serious reform of the pension system in two decades had warned that old-age benefits were increasingly at risk as life expectancy rises and interest rates remain exceptionally low, cutting investment yields.

Established to manage Norway’s oil revenues, the country’s sovereign wealth fund surpassed the $1-trillion (1.8-trillion-euro) mark on Tuesday thanks to the recent appreciation of the world’s major currencies against the US dollar and rising stock markets across the world. This amount equals nearly $189,000 (€157,000) for each of the 5.3 million people living in Norway.

Established in the 1990s to manage the Norwegian state’s oil revenues, the fund set the record thanks to the appreciation of the world’s major currencies against the dollar and a good stock market health.

Global macro fund manager Hugh Hendry has taken the “difficult decision” to close his flagship hedge fund after 15 years, in a move which will see Eclectica Asset Management close as well, Citywire Selector has learned.

In a shareholder letter seen by Citywire Selector, the London-based investor, who is founder and chief investment officer of Eclectica Asset Management, said the Eclectica fund would be closed and, ultimately, the firm would shut down as well.

It has, to put it mildly, been a good year for passive investment funds that track a broad market index like the FTSE 100. Much of it has been at the expense of their active peers which try to seek out undervalued investments. Almost $500 billion has moved from the latter to the former so far this year. This keeps up a trend that has seen massive flows from active to passive strategies in recent years and the gradual growth of passive over the last 30 years.

Finland’s Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company- the country’s largest pension fund- told Bloomberg it has reduced its exposure to stocks by five per cent, most of that reduction coming from U.S. stocks.

"It seems as if there is no president in the U.S.," Varma CEO Risto Murto said. "If I look at what is the moral and practical power, there is no longer a traditional president."