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West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – The DM Swiss Equity Asymmetric Fund has successfully completed its first year of operation realising a net gain for its investors +2.67%.
"We are extremely pleased to see the fund successfully navigate its way through one of the most challenging environments for investors in living memory." Marc-Etienne Rouge, partner at Delman SA said, "Launching a new fund is a difficult task at the best of times, but to do so, and so successfully in this type of environment is remarkable and a credit to our entire team."
The DM Swiss Equity Asymmetric Fund employs a conservative long/short fundamental stock picking strategy to the Swiss equity market and is co-managed by Urs Heinimann and Adrian Peter at Mirabaud & Cie, Zurich. Both Urs and Adrian are Swiss equity specialists having spent their careers focussed on the sector.
"The performance of the fund this year is a solid endorsement of the skills of the managers and a strong validation of the strategy. We firmly believe that the type of environment we are likely to encounter going forward will be one in which the strategy continues to outperform," added Marc-Etienne.
Delman SA, is a Geneva based company specialising in the creation and the delegation of managed funds, Delman launched the DM Swiss Equity Asymmetric Fund on 30th November 2007 in partnership with Mirabaud and Cie.
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Reuters – British hedge fund manager Man Group Plc said on Tuesday banks were more highly geared than hedge funds and bank deleveraging had been the main driver of asset-price declines.
"Hedge fund deleveraging has put pressure on asset prices as clients have redeemed. But the main point is banks are deleveraging and they are many times more leveraged than hedge funds," said Man Group Chief Executive Peter Clarke.
Speaking at the Hedge Funds World conference in Zurich, Clarke also said leverage across the hedge fund industry is now at around a third of leverage levels in 2007.
West Palm Beach (HedgeCo.net) – Finvest Asset Management is set to launch a new capital protected offering for investors who are seeking to generate annual returns of between 12-20 percent in a low risk structure.
The total offering is for $500 million and is open to non-U.S. investors only. The capital protected product will be offered to investors in the form of a U.S. Dollar denominated subscription. Downward pressure on the Euro relative to the dollar, will further enhance the investment and provide a source of upward performance for investors.
The Zurich-based Asset Management company has also received a mandate to allocate around $300m to the fund of hedge funds sector as part of a low-risk strategy to capitalise on the turbulence in global financial markets market.
Allocations will be made to funds that have a track record of at least three years, have an attractive Sharpe ratio, and are targeting annual returns of between 10 and 15 per cent. Funds of funds that may have incurred negative returns will not be excluded from the selection process.
"The decision to allocate to a hedge fund goes against the current trend," says Finvest portfolio strategist Mayer Greenwald. "However, we see a tremendous amount of upside in the fund of funds space, providing that portfolio managers apply the appropriate risk management." He argues that a good fund of funds can provide value in its ability to optimise allocations and achieve an appropriate risk/reward profile.
Finvest currently operates an office from Zurich and recently announced plans to open an office in London and Cypress. It also manages the Finvest Primer and Finvest Yankee funds.
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Zurich, September 2008 – Finter Bank Zurich and Bank Hugo Kahn AG, Zurich, hereby announce the merger of their two institutions. Completion of the transaction is planned for the first quarter of 2009.
Bank Hugo Kahn has a tradition going back more than eighty years in the classical private-banking business and serves clients both in Switzerland and abroad. Bank Hugo Kahn’s successful business model is going to be integrated within the Finter Bank Zurich organisation, where it is to be developed further and enlarged under the same management as prior to the acquisition. Dr. Claude H. Kahn, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Bank Hugo Kahn and, to date, holder of 90% of its shares comments on the transfer: “I am really delighted to see my life’s work passing into the hands of a bank which is also controlled by an entrepreneurial family. That is the guarantee that our business strategy, focused on individual client benefits and a high level of client satisfaction, will continue to be pursued and further perfected.”
Similar delight is shown by Dr. Marco Lanzi, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Finter Bank Zurich and Vincenzo Di Pierri, its CEO: “for us, the merger with Bank Hugo Kahn represents a crucial expansion step in our core business of classical private banking. We feel very confident that given the comparable corporate cultures clients will benefit from the continuation of highly professional service and a broader range of services offered to them.”
Bank Hugo Kahn was established in 1923, being named after its founder, and ownership was transferred in 1961 to Claude H. Kahn, who remained in charge of the operational management of the bank until 1994. The current CEO, Daniel H. Schlauri, has been working for Bank Hugo Kahn for approximately thirteen years. His view is that “we are very pleased that we are going to be able to continue to look after our client relations and to expand them under the umbrella of Finter Bank Zurich. We expect the merger of the two classical private banks to bring additional stimuli for growth, thanks to the wider spectrum of products and the opening up of new markets”.
Bank Hugo Kahn manages client assets worth approximately CHF 900 million. Finter Bank Zurich was founded in 1958. At its branches in Zurich, Lugano and Chiasso, as well as through its subsidiary bank in the Bahamas, it offers comprehensive services to wealthy private clients, with its main focus on investment advisory services and portfolio management. Its subsidiary FinterLife offers fund-linked life insurance products. The Finter Bank Group belongs to the Italmobiliare Group, which has operations around the world. The Pesenti family, which stands behind Italmobiliare, traces its success as an entrepreneurial dynasty, principally in the cement industry, back to the nineteenth century.
In this transaction, Swiss Capital Group acted as the exclusive financial consultant to the sellers.
Contacts:
Bank Hugo Kahn: Dr. Hans-Rudolf Staiger Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors Tel. +41 44 283 86 86
Finter Bank Zurich: Dr. Marco Lanzi Chairman of the Board of Directors Tel. +41 44 289 57 57
Evening Standard – Krom River, which has £453 million in assets, said it was moving to Switzerland, known for its low tax regime.
The fund is one of the few to perform well in the credit crunch and would see its partners’ income tax rate fall from 40 per cent to 10 per cent with the switch to the small town of Zug, south of Zurich.
The move makes the firm the latest to quit London for lower tax regimes. It came as HSBC fuelled fears of an exodus of leading companies. Three FTSE250 firms disclosed last month that they were leaving London.
The disclosure by Britain’s biggest bank that it was reviewing having its headquarters in London will heap more pressure on the Government to end uncertainty over its tax policies. Key tax concerns include government proposals to begin taxing "non-domiciled" foreign staff.
