Launching good products and marketing them efficiently is a priority in the mature Swedish retail fund market, according to Mats Lagerqvist, CEO at Robur, Swedbank’s fund management arm.

Ángel Martinez-Aldama, director at Inverco, the Spanish association of pensions and investment funds, will be speaking at the European Fund Series – Spain conference, taking place at Madrid’s Hotel Palace on the afternoon of 6 June.

The Lion City is finding it doesn’t have enough wealth management professionals to cover its growing industry. Ted Wilson reports

Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s head of European business development, Alex Fletcher, tells Yuri Bender about how Ucits III has encouraged the business to embrace a retail strategy

While it is difficult for GSAM to sell its equity and fixed income products in France, where outsourcing is seen as weakness, and there are many good-quality domestic funds houses, Mr Fletcher’s team is having more success there with hedge funds. They are believed to have $130m with Crédit Agricole Asset Management’s fund of hedge funds unit, and much larger amounts, perhaps more than half a billion each, with houses including AGF Alternative Asset Management and Olympia among others.

Asset managers are under pressure to keep distribution channels informed of the latest investment products – but it’s no longer enough to give the same information to everyone. Elisa Trovato looks at how to make sure clients get the data they need

Back to basics

The world of equity funds is becoming increasingly diverse and offers a bewildering array of strategies. How should one best navigate this and find the most suitable fund? By not forgetting the basics! A solid starting point is ascertained by defining a risk budget. Once determined you will find that you create a narrower and more manageable universe which still offers many interesting approaches to finding outperformance in equity markets. You can thus evaluate potential returns relative to the risk budget by using measures such as the Sharpe ratio.

Some active managers add value by implementing high conviction ideas. This means finding someone who thoroughly knows their stocks, the stories behind them and the ‘right’ price for each stock. A relatively concentrated portfolio of around 40-60 ideas can allow for this degree of focus and allows utilisation of the best research ideas. From a risk perspective, the investor can perhaps seek some comfort from the idea that a stock story must be very strong before it makes it into or indeed is sold out of a relatively small portfolio.

Experts agree that the Nordic region’s private banking industry will explode over the next few years. But how long will it take to catch up with Europe, and what models will it follow? Elisa Trovato reports

Managing risk in investments is obviously important to the bottom line, but it is also a fundemental to the health of the human mind, which associates it with physical pain or fear. Franklin Templeton’s Luxembourg-based SICAV range consider managing risk as an important part of their investment process

The booming economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China show no signs of slowing down in 2007. BNP Paribas Asset Management, which oversees more than $30bn in emerging market securities, looks at how the markets will develop and why ‘BRIC’ isn’t just a marketing concept

Industry insiders agree that running an exchange traded fund is all about size. With sufficient assets under managment, funds can keep costs and charges down. Simon Hildrey reports

“During the past month, our balanced portfolio continued to benefit from the global market’s recovery. Several positions taken on European and Asian equities, as well as corporate/emerging high-yield bonds, contributed positively to performance. This was due to the decline in risk aversion which resulted from the rebound. Thus, we kept our secured portfolio unchanged just as we decided last month to increase our fixed income exposure, and trimmed our exposure in emerging markets and Euroland. We also forecast that our convertibles holdings should protect us from any possible market correction.”

“With regard to a potentially healthy correction in most of the global markets that have been performing extremely well over the last years, we allocated our portfolio following a more defensive style. We therefore reduced one global equities fund and built up a 10 per cent cash position. The largest weight this month is represented by the C-Quadrat Absolute Euro Bond, which replaced the Anglo Irish Active Income. It is a new open-end investment fund incorporated in Austria and investing in Euro-participating countries on an absolute return basis.”

“Further M&A; activity in equity markets has fuelled the recovery since the brief blip in late February. In view of the pace of the recovery in equities and an increase in appetite for risk, we are now of the opinion that the markets are due a breather. With this in mind we have reduced the funds equity exposure by removing the Aberdeen Asia Pacific fund. While this fund has a strong bias to quality and value we feel that any market correction caused by a global de-risking will affect the Asia markets.”

“Despite the expectations of slower economic growth, the market continued to deliver positive returns. A high level of stock buybacks and corporate deal activity helped stocks to surge in April. These positive returns pushed the year-to-date results of the main indexes to more than five per cent in local currency. In April we have not changed our portfolios. However, we are waiting for newcomers in order to enhance the quality of our portfolios. In fact we are moving away from large and fat organisations towards small and hungry ones.”

“The allocation is now 40 per cent equities, 40 per cent alternative and 15 per cent fixed income. We have allocated five per cent of the portfolio to cash which would normally be in fixed income. However, with cash yields high and increasing, cash is an interesting asset class and offers a substitute for fixed income. On the equity side, we increased allocation to the JPM Emerging Market Alpha Plus Fund which provides exposure to emerging markets, but the manager will use the flexibility of UCITS III to hedge market risk. Last month’s allocation to the IdB Real Estate Equity Fund was timely. The European property market dropped three per cent in April and this fund delivered a positive return of + 1 per cent.”

“So far in 2007, the trend has kept being our friend : basically, what worked during the previous years still works in 2007, i.e. equity as a whole, with the emphasis on whatever is cyclical or small cap and more dimmed returns in the US. But past performance is not indicative at all of future returns, particularly if some trends outside the equity markets alter. The dollar softness is a new parameter to keep in mind. The only move we made this month was a slight increase of the US weight, which now accounts for a quarter of the total equity exposure, which obviously has to be hedged back into the base currency.”

“We maintain a positive medium-term view towards equities based on

reasonable valuations and a supportive environment (M&A;, share buy-backs, and so on). However the recent rebound seems fragile. Market breadth has decreased, showing that the rebound has been led by a small number of stocks. Trading volume has also been lower, which is not a sign of strength. We are therefore taking some profits and increasing our alternative exposure. We continue to advocate a fairly balanced mix of styles with a specific focus on the quality of corporate earnings. We also continue to prefer large caps to small caps.”

“Last month’s very positive performance of the equity markets suggests to us a more concentrated portfolio with a restricted number of themes. For the same reason we increased the investment in market neutral funds (JPM Highbridge Statistical Mkt Neutral) or with a low correlation with the equity market (CAF Dynarbitrage Volatility and JB Commodity Fund). On the bond side, we do not see many opportunities in the traditional investments. For this reason we still have a very diversified portfolio with total return bond funds (Henderson Absolute Return Bond, CS Target return), as well as convertible funds (GLG Convertible fund).”

“Equity markets have made a strong start to the quarter while most bond markets have fallen. So far, weakness in the US housing market does not appear to have spread to a general slowdown, encouraging hopes of a soft landing for the world economy and for equity markets. Investors should be prepared for further tests of nerves as this adjustment period continues, but this is offset by the continued flow of merger and takeover deals, prompted by equity valuations which appear well supported if the downside fears for growth prove to be unfounded.”

Each month in PWM, nine top European asset allocators reveal how they would spend E100,000 in a fund supermarket for a fairly conservative client with a balanced strategy

With an increasing trend for high-net-worth individuals to eschew institutionalised funds of hedge funds, how are private clients constructing their hedge fund portfolios – and managing the new risks? Martin Steward reports

The move away from in-house software development towards bought-in solutions has left banks with a bewildering choice of applications. Alison Ebbage looks at how to find the best for you

Axeltis has built a reputation as an intermediary between asset managers and distributors. Alison Ebbage talks to its head of business development about how the formation of Natixis will change the company’s position