Market News
Parmalat is suing its former auditors over their dealings with the Italian dairy group before its near collapse last December.
Deloitte & Touche and Grant Thornton International, as well as current and past affiliates, are named in the lawsuit filed in Illinois in the US.
It is the fourth suit Parmalat has filed in a bid to claw back some of the Eu4bn missing from its accounts.
Parmalat?s former management is at the centre of Italy?s biggest fraud probe. The company was declared insolvent after it emerged that almost Eu4bn the firm supposedly held in an account did not exist.
Subsequent investigations revealed a huge hole in the firm?s balance sheet, covered up by as much as 15 years of false accounting. The company is now run by a government-appointed administration, which is implementing a restructuring plan.
Both Deloitte & Touche and Grant Thornton said they would fight the lawsuits vigorously.
?Deloitte Italy believes the lawsuit is entirely unjustified,? the firm said in a statement. ?It was the actions of Deloitte Italy which led to the fraud being uncovered.?
Grant Thornton said that it did not accept Parmalat?s move was a ?legitimate action?.
Parmalat has already issued proceedings against UBS, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank.
The US Securities & Exchange Commission has ordered Janus Capital Management (JCM) to pay $100m for allowing investors to ?market time?.
Half of that sum is civil penalties and half disgorgement.
The SEC said that Janus had negotiated agreements with 12 entities that allowed them to market time some of Janus? mutual funds. ?At the same time JCM entered into these agreements, the prospectuses for the funds being timed stated, or at least strongly implied, that JCM did not permit frequent trading or market timing in these funds.?
At least some of the agreements were entered in return for clients leaving sticky assets ? agreeing to make long term investments in some funds.
The SEC co-ordinated with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer?s office, Colorado Attorney General Ken Salazar and the Colorado Division of Securities.
In April, Janus announced that its CEO Mark Whitson had decided to resign. He was replaced by Steve Scheid, who almost immediately reached agreements in principle with the regulators. This week?s fine is part of that agreement.
In April, Janus also agreed to pay $1.2m to Colorado, and to reduce its management fees.
Cassa di Compensazione e Garanzia (CC&G) has launched a central counterparty service for Italian government bonds traded on trading platform MTS. The service will run in partnership with LCH Clearnet.
Brokers will be able to remain anonymous and settle netting and clearing margins through one single virtual central counterparty service. Banca Nazionale del Lavoro was the first bank to use the service.
Barclays is making its first foray into the largest credit card market after buying US card issuer Juniper Financial this week for $293m.
Although Juniper is only the 20th largest credit card issuer in the US by assets, with $1.4bn in outstanding balances on 700,000 accounts, it is one of the fastest growing.
Barclays, which is buying the business from the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, said Juniper should contribute about $150m of pre-tax profits to Barclays within three years.
Barclays said it would invest up to £100m over the next two years in Juniper with the bulk of the amount spent on marketing. Juniper?s main business line is providing co-branded cards to companies, including Best Western hotel group, Frontier Airlines, and Gulf Petroleum.
The acquisition will be financed from cash resources.
Senior
Deutsche Bank has appointed Henry Ritchotte as head of global markets, Japan. He replaces Eiji Nakai who has resigned. Nakai held the position since 2000.
Ritchotte joined Deutsche in London in 1995. Earlier this year he moved from Singapore, where he was head of global market sales in Asia, to Tokyo, where he became deputy head of global markets, Japan.
Danske Bank has appointed Stephan Day head of corporate and institutional banking and Andrew Collins as chief operating officer with a focus on business in London.
Day has been with the bank since 1998 while Collins has worked at Danske for around 20 years.
Both men report to general manager Angus MacLennan who also looks after client coverage for corporate and institutional accounts in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Germany.
Fixed Income
BNP Paribas has hired Matthew Schultheis as a director and head of sales in its Chicago office. He reports to Vasan Varathan, head of investor coverage in the interest rate group.
Schultheis joins from Credit Suisse First Boston in Chicago where he was a director, responsible for selling government, federal agency, derivative and mortgage securities to institutional clients.
Before that, he worked at LF Rothschild as a vice president in the treasury department.
?There are three salespeople in Chicago and BNP Paribas is planning to add two more by the end of the year,? said Varathan.
BNP Paribas is expanding its US-based junk bond sales and trading business with three hires.
John Agnew and Hutch Peglar join from Fleet Securities, now part of Bank of America. Agnew will be a senior trader and Peglar a high yield analyst in BNPP?s high yield business.
Dan Raedle will become a senior high yield salesman having worked in high yield and distressed securities at Royal Bank of Canada.
Bear Stearns has recruited Simon Denehy as a managing director in its European fixed income sales team.
Denehy joins from Royal Bank of Scotland where he spent two and a half years marketing cash products. He will report to Martin Bates, head of credit product sales.
Denehy will focus on marketing fixed income cash credit products to asset managers in the UK.
Equity
Deutsche Bank has made two hires in its structured and investment products group that sits within its global equities derivatives business.
Iván Santillán joins as a director, responsible for Latin America product coverage. In addition, Keith Cunningham is hired as a vice president, working in the origination team led by Michael Chun, who is responsible for origination, hedge fund sales and institutional client solutions.
Based in New York, Santillán and Cunningham will report to Matthew Carrara, managing director and head of global equity derivatives for the Americas.
Santillán joins after five years at Merrill Lynch where he focused on the origination and sale of equity-linked structured products to clients in Latin America. From 1999 to 2001, he served as head of equity trading for the firm?s Buenos Aires office.
Cunningham joins after six years at Merrill Lynch where he was part of the equity-linked structured product origination and sales team for the Americas.
Lehman Brothers has appointed Jenkin Leung as managing director and head of Hong Kong and China equity sales. Leung will oversee equity sales in Hong Kong and China take responsibility for all the bank?s Hong Kong-based equity sales teams. He will report to Bill McGrath, head of Asia equity research and sales in Hong Kong.
Leung joins from Macquarie Securities in Hong Kong where he was head of Hong Kong and China sales and product.
Before that he was with Crédit Lyonnais Securities Asia, firstly in institutional sales in London, covering Asia ex-Japan, and subsequently as head of Hong Kong and China sales, covering institutional investors in Hong Kong, Singapore and the UK.
Investment Banking
Morgan Stanley has appointment Paul Adams as managing director and head of its healthcare services team. Adams, who has worked in the sector for 15 years, joins the bank from Citigroup where he was a managing director in the bank?s global healthcare group for two years.
Before that, he was head of healthcare investment banking for Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and Wasserstein Perella, which he joined in 1994.
The sector has seen a surge of M&A activity over the past year and is one of the most active for private equity investment, particularly in the US.
Morgan Stanley made $31.3m in advisory fees from the top five M&A sectors in the first half of this year, according to Dealogic.
Syndicated loans
Deutsche Bank has hired Einar Johansen as a director on the sales team of the loan capital markets desk. He will work in the bank?s debt products division.
Johansen joins from Goldman Sachs where he worked in European distressed trading and European leveraged finance in London.
Structured finance
Michael Pfaue, head of conduit and portfolio management at Bayerische Hypo und Vereinsbank (HVB) in Munich, has stepped down from his position at the bank and is on gardening leave until January next year, EuroWeek has learnt.
The departure is a further loss to HVB?s Munich-based securitisation group, which parted company with Petra Schwab, head of HVB?s German ABS department, at the end of last month.
At least two other bankers are expected to leave the group in the coming months.
Pfaue and Schwab reported to Mark Lewis, head of European securitisation at HVB.
Lewis could not be contacted for comment yesterday (Thursday).
Pfaue told EuroWeek yesterday that he is still at the bank and working in a diluted role.
Pfaue did not divulge his plans after he leaves in January but confirmed that he will still be working within securitisation.
Graeme Delaney-Smith, an investment director in Intermediate Capital Group?s UK mezzanine business, has left the firm. He is believed to be joining Alcentra to run the CDO management company?s new mezzanine fund.
Officials at Alcentra were not available for comment.
Derivatives
ABN Amro has hired five to its commodities team, including a further two from rival BNP Paribas (BNPP).
Hakan Kocayusufpasaoglu has joined the bank as a senior energy trader from BNPP, where he was a senior European crude and product options trader.
Gavin Tait, who was previously a European natural gas trader at BNPP, has also joined as a senior energy trader.
ABN Amro had previously hired from BNPP in May when the Dutch bank appointed Wayne Harburn and Vincent Chevance to its commodity derivatives trading team.
Harburn, who was previously head of European energy trading at the French bank, joined as global head of commodity trading. Chevance, formerly part of BNPP?s energy derivatives marketing team, was appointed global head of commodity marketing.
ABN Amro also hired Dominic Harris, previously head of global oil derivatives marketing at BP International. Harris has joined the energy team as a senior salesman.
Harris, Kocayusufpasaoglu and Tait will be based in London.
In New York, ABN has hired Jeffrey Baird as a senior energy trader from Merrill Lynch, and Bruno Stanziale as a senior energy salesman from Deutsche Bank.
Baird was previously head of oil and natural gas trading at Merrill Lynch, while Stanziale worked in a similar marketing role at Deutsche.
Forex
Lehman Brothers has appointed Mike Burton as a managing director and head of European foreign exchange (FX) institutional sales. He will report to Riccardo Banchetti, managing director, head of fixed income sales Europe.
Burton joins from Goldman Sachs in London, where he was managing director, head of FX sales Europe. Before that, he was head of corporate and institutional FX sales at HSBC.
Research
HVB Group has named Jörg Krämer chief economist and head of its economics department. Krämer is chief economist of Invesco Asset Management in Germany. He is to join HVB on January 1.
As of April 1 next year, Martin Hüfner, who is HVB?s chief economist at the moment, will become a consultant to the management board. The economics department will merge with other research departments and Krämer will end up reporting to Thorsten Wienelt, global head of research.
Asset management
Fund manager Cairn Capital has made six new hires this week including Iain Robertson, chairman of corporate banking and financial markets at Royal Bank of Scotland, as a non-executive chairman.
Robertson is also a non-executive director of the RBS group and chairman of British Empire Securities and General Trust.
The five hires to Cairn?s management team include Tim Frost, who joins from JP Morgan where he was European head of credit sales trading and research; David Henriques, formerly co-global head of structured credit products at RBS; David Littlewood, who joins from RBS where he was co-global head of structured credit products; and Robert Pierce Jones, formerly managing director, Europe at Banque AIG and Paul Campbell, former managing director, Europe at Banque AIG, the European subsidiary of AIG Financial Products;.
Cairn Capital is based in London and receives financial backing from RBS and Star Capital Partners.
Hermes Focus Asset Management, the investment group which parted company with its two founders last week, has lost its UK investments manager to Northern Trust Global Investments.
Helen Macdonell joins Northern Trust as a portfolio manager in its active international equity team in London. Macdonell joins a team of six, headed by Stephen Dowds.
Last week Peter Butler and Steve Brown, the founders of Hermes focus funds, resigned after a boardroom row over ownership of the business and pay.
Macdonell joined Hermes in January 2002 as a senior investment analyst in the UK focus investment team.
At Northern, she replaces Simon Wright, who left recently to join a hedge fund manager.
In a separate move, Northern Trust has hired Wilson Leech from State Street to take up a new role as head of international strategic planning.
Leech, who was previously head of wealth management at State Street, will focus on asset servicing, asset management and wealth management.
He will be based in London and report to international head Stephen Potter.
BlueBay Asset Management, which specialises in European fixed income credit, has hired Jenny Winter as compliance manager. Winter moves from Capital International where she did a similar job. Before that she worked at Barclays and Schroders Investment Management.
Fahim Imam-Sadeque has also been hired as sales manager for Europe. He joins from ISIS Asset Management where he was head of institutional insurance funds.
HSBC Asset Management has hired two senior European equity portfolio managers to join its London office.
Angus Parker joins after 10 years managing a pan-European portfolio with Lazard Asset Management in London and New York.
Simon Sharp joins from Legal & General Investment Management and has over 15 years of investment management experience.
Parker and Sharp will report to Jeff Currington, head of European equities.
Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (MLIM) has appointed Minoru Kikuchi, former head of Japanese equity investment at Cititrust, as a senior portfolio manager in its Japanese large cap equity team. He will report to Marc Desmidt, co-head of the MLIM Japanese large cap team.