Sophie Baker
12 Mar 2012
Article from Financial News
Two appointments for ING Investment Management and equity and bond mandates for Aberdeen lead this week's round-up.
Fund management
ING Investment Management has been selected by Monuta funeral services and insurance provider to manage a €450m fixed income securities portfolio.
ING IM’s insurance boutique, a department set up to manage portfolios on behalf of insurers, will manage the mandate. The mandate will see ING IM take into account regulations that affect insurers, such as Solvency II.
The fixed income portfolio was previously managed by Monuta itself. Due to the increasingly complex nature of the markets, the firm opted for a partner to take over some of its investment activities. Last year Monuta transferred its monitoring activities to ING IM’s implemented client solutions department.
Monuta has insurance portfolios of more than one million policyholders.
ING IM has also been selected to manage a €500m government bond portfolio on behalf of health insurance company CZ.
Two weeks ago the Dutch firm appointed the world’s largest custodian, BNY Mellon, to provide custody and value-added services to support its new pooled investment structure.
Aberdeen Asset Management has been chosen as investment adviser to two Credit Suisse funds, effective from 2 April this year.
The $94m Credit Suisse Equity Fund (Lux) Brazil fund and the $153m Credit Suisse Bond Fund (Lux) Brazil funds will be merged into the group’s Luxembourg-domiciled Aberdeen Global Sicav in June. They will appear as the Aberdeen Global – Brazil Equity Fund and Aberdeen Global – Brazil Bond Fund.
The equity fund will be managed by Aberdeen’s global emerging markets team, and the emerging markets debt team will manage the bond fund.
Custody and fund administration
BNY Mellon has been chosen as principal paying agent, registrar, delegate and transfer agent on Dubai’s Majid Al Futtaim Sukuk’s new trust certificate issuance programme. A trust certificate is a bond or debt investment, usually in a public corporation, and is backed by other assets as collateral.
As delegate and principal paying agent, the custodian will provide fiduciary duties and make profit and principal payments to investors on behalf of MAF Sukuk. It will also handle the administration related to the issuance of certificates.
Italy-based banking group Banca Generali has appointed executive services provider Neonet as its provider of best execution services for Italian equities.
The appointment ensures best execution and compliance of the incoming Markets in financial instruments directive.
Investment platform Cofunds has been chosen as fund custodian to Charles Stanley, a stockbroking and investment management company, with an initial £1.2bn of funds migrating to its institutional service.
Cofunds will provide specialist fund dealing, settlement and sub-custodian services to the Charles Stanley Group, simplifying in-house processing and reducing costs.
Mauritius management company International Financial Services, or IFS, has implemented Multifonds’ Fund Accounting platform, and will migrate all of its weekly and monthly funds by the end of this quarter.
IFS provides advisory and management services for international businesses, servicing institutions and administering funds for asset managers including BlackRock, Invesco and PowerShares.
Texas-based Frost Bank has implemented Calypso Technology’s software solution, to support its financial derivatives business. The solution supports interest rate derivatives processing, and the plan is to extend the system to manage the trading and processing of various instruments, including commodities and foreign exchange.
The implementation allows Frost, which focuses on commercial and consumer banking across Texas, to expand their product offering and build market share across its range of services.
Article from Financial News
