CC-BY-SA-2.0, FlickrPhoto: AJC ajcann.wordpress.com
. UBS Raises Record $471m for Oncology Impact Fund
UBS Wealth Management which will release its first quarter results this Tuesday and might announce a change in its business, has raised a record $471 million for the final closing of the UBS Oncology Impact Fund, an impact investing initiative aimed at developing cancer treatments.
Investments will be made in early stage oncology to accelerate the development of new cures. Cancer care is particularly appropriate for this kind of investment because of a supportive regulatory environment.
According to UBS, the market for cancer drugs is expected to grow faster than for any other disease, due to populations ageing in developed countries and an expanding middle class in emerging markets with better access to care. Oncology is the largest and fastest growing therapeutic area in terms of drug development activity, representing approximately a quarter of total research spend.
In addition to investing in early-stage cancer treatments, the Oncology Impact Fund will support academic research and better access to cancer care in the developing world. A portion of any performance fees generated and half of a royalty attached with best efforts to all successful drugs sales will be managed by UBS Optimus Foundation and ultimately fund expanded access to cancer care for children and their families in the developing world. The other half of the royalty amount will be spent on academic grants to promising oncology-related research. The Fund has already struck the first royalty agreement of this type, bringing this innovative practice from theory to reality.
Jürg Zeltner, President of UBS Wealth Management, says: “The record sum raised for the UBS Oncology Impact Fund is a milestone for our work in sustainable investing and for the impact investing industry as a whole. We believe initiatives like this can give hope to cancer sufferers and their families and divert more capital towards finding treatments and cures.”
Mark Haefele, Global Chief Investment Officer at UBS Wealth Management, says: “Impact investing gives our clients an opportunity to change the world and earn a financial return simultaneously. Using this growing medium to target cancer, one of the planet’s biggest killers, helps fulfil a critical social goal.”
Ansbert Gadicke, Co-Founder at bioventure investment manager MPM Capital, which is collaborating with UBS WM on the UBS Oncology Impact Fund, says: “We are delighted to be advising UBS on the management of this landmark fund. Over the long term, we hope this collaboration will add significant value in the field of oncology and in ongoing efforts to finance its development.”
CC-BY-SA-2.0, FlickrFoto: Fortune Live Media
. La lección de inversión más importante en el mundo para Warren Buffett es...
At the annual meeting of his Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett stated that the US, the economy and his company would continue to grow saying, is a “remarkably attractive place in which to conduct a business.” He also defended his favorite stocks, mentioning he has “not seen evidence that convinces me that it’ll be more likely I reach 100 if I suddenly switched to water and broccoli,” but not everything he said was positive. Besides mentioning that some of his holdings are hitting tough spots, the Oracle of Omaha did warn about the risk of derivatives, and against consultants and Hedge Funds.
In his opinion, and given several years of poor returns, “probably the most important investment lesson in the world,” includes ditching expensive money managers. “Supposedly sophisticated people, generally richer people, hire consultants. And no consultant in the world is going to tell you, ‘Just buy an S&P index fund and sit for the next 50 years,’” he said. “You don’t get to be a consultant that way, and you certainly don’t get an annual fee that way.” His bet that a Vanguard Group Inc. fund that tracks the S&P 500 Index could beat a basket of hedge funds from 2008 through 2017 is going strong, with a 21.9% return from the bundle of hedge funds picked by Protege Partners while the S&P 500 index fund soared 65.7% in the last 8 years. The profits of the bet will go to charity.
On a follow up interview, Buffett also mentioned that he might consider taking money out of banks if they charge for deposits. Charlie Munger and him also criticized Valeant Pharmaceuticals, and Buffett, a Hillary Clinton supporter, implied that any one president, even Trump, could not derail the US economy, or his company’s business completely. “We’ve operated under price controls, we’ve had 52% federal taxes applied to our earnings… I will predict that if either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton become president Berkshire will do fine.” He concluded.
Foto cedidaGuy Wagner, director general de BLI.. Banque de Luxembourg unifica sus unidades de gestión de activos
Banque de Luxembourg Investments (BLI), Banque de Luxembourg’s asset management company, has strengthened its multi-management team by recruiting Amélie Morel and Jean-Baptiste Fargeau as fund analysts. The team has now 5 people in charge of analyzing, selecting and monitoring an external fund list, as well as the management of the funds of funds multi-asset classes.
Amélie will be in charge of the follow-up of the asset classes European, SRI, sectorial and theme equities. Jean-Baptiste takes of the responsibility of the asset classes emerging equities and bonds and of high yield and corporate bonds.
“Following new recruitments in the past few years, mainly in the equities and fund distribution teams, we have also decided to strengthen our fund selection team”, says Fanny Nosetti, Head of BLI’s multi-management. “Amélie and Jean-Baptiste have gained first professional experience in other companies before joining us and they are an excellent addition to our asset management company. We are delighted to welcome them to the team!”
Amélie Morel (29) replaces Inès Buttet who left BLI. Following nearly three years auditing investment funds atDeloitte, Amélie worked as an investment analyst with a Luxembourg wealth structurer. Amelie holds a Master’s degree in Finance from Grenoble Ecole de Management and is a level 3 CFA candidate.
Jean-Baptiste Fargeau (36) has an engineering degree from Ecole Centrale de Nantes as well as a master degree in business administration from the IAE Paris. He started his career in Luxembourg in 2005 as a quantitative analyst within the management company J.Chahine Capital, and then became portfolio manager in 2007 in the same company.
CC-BY-SA-2.0, FlickrPhoto: Thomson Reuters. Seilern Investment Management Won Four New Awards
Seilern Investment Management have recently been acknowledged throughout Europe in the Lipper Awards, for the long-term performance of our funds. On 19th April in London, they announced the final round of UK and Pan-European awards, bringing the total to 14 awards in 2016.
Over the past weeks Seilern Investment Management have won awards for Best Equity Group (Small Company) in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, UK, and Europe and Stryx World Growth has won for Best 5 Year Performance in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, France, UK, and Europe.
“These awards are a testament to the commitment the team has in seeking out companies that demonstrate only the very highest prospects for long-term growth and reflect our consistency in generating returns for our investors. While we are gratified to be recognised, above all, we are pleased that we continue to deliver for our clients”, said Raphael Pitoun, Chief Investment Officer.
Capital Strategies Partners has an strategic agreement to cover Spain, Italy, Switzerland and LatAm market for Seilern Investment Management.
Foto: Ben
. Preqin reconocido en los 2016 Queen’s Award for Enterprise
Preqin has been awarded a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in the category of International Trade. The award recognizes Preqin as an outstanding UK business, citing excellence in its field and sustained growth in its overseas business. This year the awards, which are announced annually on Her Majesty the Queen’s birthday, praise 243 UK companies for leading the way in business achievement.
The Queen’s Awards for Enterprise are the UK’s highest official accolades for business success. Operating in various forms since 1966, they recognize UK businesses for outstanding achievement in one of three categories:International Trade, Innovation and Sustainable Development. Entrants come from all parts of the UK, from city-located centers of commerce to the remotest of locations, and include organizations involved in a wide range of industries and sectors.
CEO Mark O’Hare said of the award:
“It is a huge honor to be included in this year’s list of Queen’s Award winners, especially so on the occasion of Her Majesty’s 90th birthday. Over the past 13 years, Preqin has strived to deliver excellent products to our customers, becoming the leading source of data and intelligence for the global alternative assets industry. We are extremely proud and grateful to have this hard work recognized by the Queen’s Award panel. I would like to add my deepest gratitude to all of our directors, staff and partners for creating the culture of excellence, integrity, and dedication which characterizes Preqin, and without which this achievement would not be possible. Most of all, we are grateful to our many customers around the world for their longstanding support.”
Zurich-headquartered private bank EFG International has agreed to acquire the Luxembourg based private banking activities of UBI Banca International from Unione di Banche Italiane.
UBI Banca International (Luxembourg) has around EUR 3.6 billion in assets under management.
EFG International specified that the transaction is structured as a cash acquisition of UBI Banca International (Luxembourg) S.A. and will have no material impacts on EFG International’s regulatory capital position.
The deal is expected to close during the first half of 2017, and the company will merge into EFG Bank (Luxembourg) S.A..
UBI’s branches in Madrid and Munich are not part of the transaction, as well as its fiduciary and corporate banking activities.
It forms the second move of EFG International in the M&A activity since the start of 2016 as the company is to soon acquire the Lugano based private bank BSI, after an agreement has been signed on 21 February 2016 with BSI’s sole shareholder BTG Pactual.
The EFG International annual general meeting, scheduled on 29 April 2016, shall result in a shareholder approval for the transaction. The deal is to be closed in Q4 2016 and BSI is expected to entirely merge into EFG International at end 2017.
CC-BY-SA-2.0, FlickrPhoto: Balint Földesi. Serial Inverters, the US Treasury 's New Target
The US Treasury Department has taken new steps to further curtail a popular type of corporate transaction in which a US company merges with a foreign counterpart, then moves abroad to lower its tax bill. The strategy known as corporate inversions technically involves having the foreign company, based in a country with lower tax rates, buy the US company’s assets. Ireland, with its highly competitive 12.5% corporate tax rate, has been a popular place to incorporate, Eric McLaughlin, Investment Specialist at BNPP IP.
The new rules, announced in conjunction with the Internal Revenue Service, take particular aim at foreign companies that have completed multiple deals with US companies in a short period, what the regulator calls “serial inverters.”
The two main points Eric McLaughlin, Investment Specialist at BNPP IP, presents are the implementation of a three-year look-back period for US-based mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and earnings stripping:
Three-year look-back period. This relates to how the Treasury is going to enforce ownership fractions for inversions. If the shareholders of a foreign acquirer own more than 20%, but less than 40% of the combined entity, and the foreign acquirer conducts substantial business activities in the foreign jurisdiction, the inversion technically works. If the shareholders of the foreign acquirer own more than 40% of the combined entity, the inversion works and most of the negative consequences are avoided. The new rules go further, effectively counting domestic acquisitions by an inverted acquirer in the last three years as impermissible. If the value of those previous acquisitions is disregarded, the foreign acquirer becomes smaller and subject to more stringent inversion rules.
A tactic known as ‘earnings stripping’ involves the US subsidiary borrowing from the parent company and using the interest payments on the loans to offset earnings — a cost that is not reflected on financial statements, but which lowers the tax bill. The new rules classify this intra-company transaction as if it were stock-based instead of debt, eliminating the interest deduction for the US subsidiary. This change applies not just to inversions, but to any foreign company that has acquired a US entity and used this technique to lower taxes.
Implications of the new steps to curb corporate inversions
“We thought the Treasury had deployed the full extent of its regulatory power in two previous inversion updates. The rules recently announced by the Treasury, however, were seen as much more aggressive and expansive and sent shock waves up and down Wall Street,” says McLaughlin. The most immediate reaction was the news that Pfizer plans to abandon its USD 152 billion merger with Allergan – the largest deal yet aimed at helping a US company shed its US corporate citizenship for a lower tax bill. Pfizer executives have made no secret of their belief that renouncing its corporate citizenship and lowering its overall tax bill was their duty as stewards to shareholders.
Yet even by the Treasury’s own admission, the latest rules will not be enough to completely halt the flow of companies seeking to renounce their US citizenship. There is even a question as to whether the Treasury has overstepped its authority. Such a move would be possible only with an overhaul of the tax rules by Congress, which few believe will happen soon. The current political climate also complicates the matter. Corporate tax policy may be a key issue in the fall presidential elections as Democrats have moved to toughen legislation, while Republicans look to lower corporate tax rates.
It remains to be seen what effect the new rules have on the broader equity market. While inversions have not played a dominating role in the mergers and acquisitions, (40 companies have struck inversion deals over the past five years, according to data from Dealogic), this does put additional pressure on investment banks. Meanwhile, in filing a lawsuit to block the Halliburton-Baker Hughes merger, the Obama administration has demonstrated its increasing willingness to challenge giant takeovers, reflecting a belief that the corporate world goes too far in its pursuit of megamergers.
Finally, the tax rate risk facing certain companies just got pulled forward. “The good news is that the anti-earnings stripping rules grandfather all instruments prior to April 4 and appear limited to foreign parents. The bad news is that we expect tax rate creep for US companies headquartered abroad and that these companies have lost their tax advantaged acquirer status. It also makes us wonder if this is the first step towards tighter tax regulatory frameworks globally.” He concludes.
The Bank of Japan’s regular policy meeting ended in Tokyo on Thursday with the policy committee deciding to take no action. In the event, this was a major surprise considering that in recent weeks the consensus expectation had formed solidly behind the view that the central bank would extend its negative interest rate policy which was introduced in January, and also extend the asset purchase programme. According to Nathan Gibbs, Fund Manager at Schroder Investment Management and renowned contrarian specialized on Japanese stocks, “today’s decision seems to imply that the policy committee feels more time is needed to judge the impact of the most recent changes before extending policy further.”
Japanese inflation, which was also released today, showed a marked slowdown in progress towards the central bank’s own inflation target of 2%. Indeed, in its statement the committee implicitly extended the deadline to reach that 2% target into the latter part of 2017. “This admission that the target has become harder, without any additional policy response, led to an immediate decline of around 4% in the stockmarket from the levels seen in the morning session. At the same time there was a sharp strengthening of the yen as currency markets priced-in the effective change in expected interest rate differentials. Some of the current deflationary impact is clearly due to external forces, including the weakness in the price of oil which forms a major part of Japan’s imports. Nevertheless, financial markets had already reflected the change in expectations with the implied inflation rate in index-linked bonds declining this year from around 0.8% to 0.3%. Most surveys of individual consumers in Japan also suggest that the gradual increase in inflationary expectations which has been generated in the last three years has begun to tail-off,” says Gibbs.
In his view, inconsistency introduces uncertainty and although Governor Kuroda has successfully surprised investors with the timing of previous decisions, the direction of his policy has always been absolutely clear. As a result, most investors have been prepared to accept his assertion that he would do “whatever it takes” to raise inflationary expectations. With those inflationary expectations now in decline, “the lack of response today introduces an element of uncertainty which the financial markets may view negatively. Of course, the central bank’s policy objective is to influence the real economy, not the stockmarket, and we must wait longer to see if the current policy is indeed sufficient to maintain the positive underlying trends we have seen so far,” he concludes.
Current Managing Director of Apex’s Maltese operation, Anthony O’Driscoll, has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer for the group. O’Driscoll, a member of the Certified Public Accountants of Ireland, has been with Apex for 10 years during which time he has worked at various Apex offices around the world; including Mauritius, Hong Kong, Ireland and Malta.
O’Driscoll has been instrumental in the rapid growth of the Malta office which he helped launch in 2008. Opening with just 5 employees, Apex Malta has grown exponentially now boasting a team of 70 employees servicing over 124 funds. Paulianne Nwoko current Operations Manager for Apex Malta replaces O’Driscoll as Managing Director for the office and David Butler becomes Chairman. Butler is the founder of Green Day Advisors LLP and Kinetic Partners, bringing over 20 years of industry experience with him to the role at Apex Malta.
Peter Hughes, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer said: “Anthony has been a driving force behind operational innovation for the Apex Malta office. His dedication and commitment to the success and growth of the office are evident in its rapid expansion since establishment 8 years ago. Through implementing progressive projects, such as successfully ensuring Apex Malta becomes the first paperless Apex office, Anthony has demonstrated an aptitude for operational excellence that we want the rest of the group to benefit from. I’m delighted that he can now support me in the role as COO for the group and ensure these progressive developments are implemented quickly and effectively across the rest of the Apex group.”
Anthony O’Driscoll, Chief Operating Officer said: “I am delighted to take on the role of COO for Apex. The group as a whole delivers a really distinctive service to its clients through continually evolving and adding to its product suite and delivering solutions spanning the full value chain of a fund. Understanding the day-to-day requirements of each unique asset manager, alongside the wider impact of market change on their businesses overall, is what fosters longevity in relationships and forms real trust in our ability to service and support our clients. I look forward to further developing our operating strategy on a global basis and implementing some of the procedures already successfully in place in Malta, to benefit both the other local Apex offices and in turn their clients.”
David Butler, commenting on his role as Chairman for Apex Malta, said: “I am thrilled to be joining the Apex Malta team in the position of Chairman. At this exciting time of growth for the company I will look to supporting its local development and helping reinforce Apex’s position as the leading administrator in Malta”.
Foto: José Carlos Cortizo Pérez
. BMO Global AM lanza el Global Equity Market Neutral Sicav Fund
BMO Global Asset Management has launched BMO Global Equity Market Neutral Sicav fund, in its popular ‘True Styles’ series, a strategy that combines value, momentum, low volatility, size and GARP (Growth at a Reasonable Price) styles.
The investments are all made on the large cap global developed markets universe as represented by MSCI World. The choice of this universe as well as the strict liquidity limits that are applied in portfolio construction ensure that investors in the fund have access to a truly liquid alternative strategy.
“Excess returns of portfolios can often be attributed to exposure to certain styles,” said fund manager, Erik Rubingh, Head of Systematic Equitiesat BMO Global Asset Management. “True Styles is used to focus our portfolios, only targeting the desired styles, without interference from other factors.”
Mandy Mannix, Head of Client Management, BMO Global Asset Management (EMEA), declares: “Our clients believe the BMO Global Equity Market Neutral (SICAV) will deliver an ideal building block for their multi-asset portfolios as it is liquid, highly diversified, with proven low correlation to major asset classes and the strategy has delivered considerably better returns than a passive index with lower volatility.”
The objective of the fund, co-managed by Erik Rubingh and Chris Child, is to generate an annual gross return of 4.5% in excess of cash with a target volatility level of 6%. Euro and US$ hedged share classes are available from launch.
