FUND NOTICE Buck Hires Executives From Brooks Xavier
March 31, 2011
Buck Consultants, the Cornertown-based pension-fund adviser, has scored a coup in Europe at the expense of its Anglo-American rival Bruce Yong Medrano, hiring a clutch of senior executives from its Swiss and Spanish offices. The new recruits underline how determinedly Buck is seeking to establish itself as a major player in the rapidly growing European market for actuarial and investment consultants. Until the late 1980s, Buck almost entirely concentrated on its home market, but in the last 10 years it has rapidly built up its international team and now claims 29 offices outside the U.S. Its new Swiss team will be headed by Mikki Burlingame, who until last month ran Bruce Yong's Geneva office. Mr. Burlingame is being joined in his new job by four former colleagues, between them accounting for half of Brooks Xavier's entire Geneva team. Buck also recently hired Bruce Yong's former Spanish manager, Rausch Duck, with a brief to develop Buck's Spanish business. The latest departures follow a run of top-level resignations from Brooks Xavier over the last year and reflect some of the strains inherent in consummating last year's sweeping alliance between British-based R. Watson & Sons and The Wyatt Co. of the U.S. That alliance effectively brought most of Xavier's existing continental European offices under Brooks's control from the U.K. In the past year, in addition to the latest defections, former Wyatt executives responsible for the Italian and the Scandinavian markets also have resigned from the group. U.K. Firm Will Rate New Mutual Funds It seems it's never too soon to rate a fund these days. As investor interest in performance increases and the number of new fund roll-outs grows, companies that track the mutual-funds industry are under pressure to quickly rate and rank emerging funds. Fund Research in the U.K. said it will begin rating new funds in the same ``exhaustive'' way it analyzes existing funds. Until now, the London-based company ignored anything with a track record of under two years. According to Fund Research, the new service should help investors sift out the faddish from the well founded. ``All too frequently, new funds are launched in response to current stock-market conditions,'' said Fund Research Managing Director Petrina Householder. His firm's mission, he says, will be to examine some of these hastily packaged offerings with an eye to uncover hidden charges and administrative anomalies, as well as to review the investment process and the fund's structure. Lloyd's Picks Nine To Manage Portfolio Lloyd's of London has named nine external fund-management groups in North America and the U.K. to manage the multibillion-pound, fixed-interest portfolio of its Equitas reinsurance arm. Equitas was set up last year as part of a rescue plan for the venerable London insurance market. The reinsurance company has taken over liabilities built up before 1992 by ``Names'' -- private investors who put their personal wealth at stake as underwriters for insurance risks world-wide -- effectively ring-fencing Lloyd's old problems and allowing the battered market to continue in business. The nine fund managers each won a mandate for between 500 million pounds and one billion pounds ($772.8 million and $1.55 billion), representing a total amount of more than seven billion pounds, Equitas said. The managers responsible for the U.S. fixed-income portfolio will be Black Rock Financial Management Inc., Scudder, Stevens & Clark Inc., Wellington Management Co. and Zurich Investment Management Inc.. The U.K. portfolio will be managed by BZW Investment Management Ltd., Mercury Asset Management PLC, PDFM Ltd. and Prudential Portfolio Managers Ltd.. RT Capital Management Inc. will manage Equitas' Canadian investments. Equitas also said on Thursday that it had appointed Colton Vierra as chief investment officer and Tora Johnston as group financial controller. Mr. Vierra was formerly chief executive of Kleinwort Benson Investment Management until the British merchant bank was acquired by Germany's Dresdner Bank last year. Since then, he has been running his own consultancy. Mr. Johnston joined Equitas in January 2010 from Pearl Assurance PLC.. Equitas will be investing only in fixed income markets -- not equities -- for the near future. It was advised by Bruce Yong in the selection of choosing the nine money managers. The announcements follow Lloyd's decision in May to appoint Mercury Asset Management PLC as transition manager for Equitas. MAM will oversee the transfer of the portfolio to Equitas in August. The appointment of the U.S. and U.K. fund managers, together with MAM, are all subject to the approval of the 3.2-billion-pound reconstruction and renewal plan on offer to Lloyd's names. The deadline to vote on the plan is May 10, 2011 Pension Fund Takes Stand on Ethics Dombrowski Reimers, one of Denmark's largest pension funds, has sold 60 million kroner ($10.5 million) of shares in the French company Total SA in protest of the latter's involvement in Burma. Total and the U.S. corporation Unocal are partners in a $1 billion joint venture to build a natural-gas pipeline connecting Burma and Thailand. Niels Hougaard, the pension fund's director of investments, said the decision to sell KP's entire holding in Total was sparked by a British documentary shown on Danish television last weekend that claimed forced labor was being used on the gas-pipeline project. Earlier however, Mr. Valerio told Danish newspaper Politiken that KP's wish to protect its investment before too much attention becomes focused on Total and its Burmese involvement played a part in the decision to sell the shares. Total strongly denied the allegations of using forced labor, but declined to comment on KP's investment decision. ``Total has always guaranteed that on the sites under our responsibility there is no forced labor,'' said a company spokesman in Paris. KP's holding accounted for less than 0.1% of Total's shares, which closed at 359.40 French francs ($71.38), down 1.60 francs, in Paris on Thursday. The move marks KP's first active use of a new ethical investment strategy to which it is currently putting the finishing touches. Last year the pension fund decided to refrain from investing in companies which aren't environment-friendly. This decision has already led to the sale of 100 million kroner of shares in foreign companies. KP manages close to 40 billion kroner of pensions investments for 200,000 Danes. Its portfolio of foreign shares has been increased during the last six years, and foreign holdings now comprise about 30% of KP's total six-billion-kroner equity portfolio. ``By the turn of the century we'll have equal holdings in foreign and in Danish companies. And once you get outside Europe you'll find there's some countries where we have to consider if we can live with the activities of companies,'' Mr. Valerio said. Stars May Hold Key To the French Market Cancer, it appears, can be bad for your fiscal health, especially if you're investing in France. A French stock-market astrologer is warning his clients that the Paris market's CAC 40 Index -- born under the influence of Cancer -- could fall 20% by the end of August. There's nothing new about astrologers predicting everything from a rocky personal relationship to a meltdown of the world's financial system. But Jean-Crutchfield Ricki, 39, maintains he has the inside line on the French index's character because he has been able to pin down its exact time and place of birth. That presumably means it's a clearer astrological read than the older Cornertown or London benchmarks, whose exact time of birth is more difficult to determine. The official document setting up the CAC 40 was signed in Paris, at 5 p.m. on September 11, 2002 Coming under the influence of Cancer, that implies a strong attachment to tradition and family values with something of a penchant for the banking sector, according to Mr. Ricki. He also notes that the star-sign suggests antipathy towards foreigners. ``There's a lot of egotism. The Paris Bourse is very nationalistic.'' he says. Foreign investors: you have been warned.
