Weekly UCITS News (Friday)

Heartwood Investment Management has launched the CF Heartwood Defensive Multi Asset Fund (Defensive MAF), the sixth fund to be launched in the Multi Asset range since December 2009 after the Balanced, Balanced Income, Cautious, Cautious Income and Growth Funds were introduced. »

Aquila Capital’s AC Risk Parity 7 Fund has reached a four year track record of consistently positive year-on-year returns. »

GAM and Barclays Capital have received approval from the Irish regulator to launch the GAM Star Barclays Dynamic Multi-Index Allocation Fund. This fund of quantitative indices is a UCITS IV vehicle. As such, it will be passported into various European jurisdictions, subject to the approval of the respective host state regulators. »

EDHEC-Risk has welcomed the broadened focus of the European Securities and Markets Authority’s (ESMA) consultation paper on ETFs and other UCITS issues (ESMA/2012/44), which approaches important issues in a horizontal way across all UCITS rather than in a vertical way limited to UCITS ETFs. »

Long/short equity is the most popular strategy pursued by Alternative UCITS (Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) funds, and overall, funds invested in emerging markets have posted the best performance from January 2002 through October 2011, according to PerTrac.  »

Allocations to CTA’s and Global Macro strategies will be popular choices for investors in this quarter, according to the fifth edition of the quarterly ML Alternative UCITS Barometer (ML Barometer). Some 54% of respondents are looking to increase their exposure to Global Macro-Discretionary, making this the most popular strategy. »

CIMB-Principal Islamic Asset Management Sdn Bhd (CIMB-Principal Islamic), a joint-venture Malaysian-based Islamic global asset management company between CIMB Group and Principal Global Investors, has recently obtained approval from the Central Bank of Ireland for the establishment of CIMB-Principal Islamic Asset Management (Ireland) Public Limited. »

Finesti, the Luxembourg agency for European funds information, has reported strong growth in new clients and in its overall fund coverage in 2011. »

New research at EDHEC-Risk Institute has addressed the question of the true risks of Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) in Europe in the light of issues raised by financial regulators and international organisations. »

Deutsche Bank and Fortinbras Asset Management today announced the launch of the DB Platinum IV Fortinbras PRISM Index, a UCITS fund available through Deutsche Bank’s award winning DB Platinum fund umbrella and its dbSelect platform. »