Iceberg in vista
L’iceberg si avvicina.
E quando un enorme montagna di ghiaccio si fa più vicina, la temperatura scende i su rischia il congelamento.
Ecco spiegato perché, proprio la settimana scorsa, abbiamo letto il titolo “Congelati dalla paura” che tutti potete rileggere subito qui sotto.
A che cosa si riferisce, il titolo qui sopra? Ai Fondi Comuni di Investimento in Europa. E nello specifico, a che cosa si riferisce? Alla crisi che è in atto da mesi, della quale avete avuto, attraverso questo sito, una puntuale e qualificata informazione.
Avete avuto informazione da noi di Recce’d e da pochi altri mezzi di informazione in Italia.
Il che è davvero curioso, perché la notizia è di prima pagina nel Mondo.
Riportiamo, allo scopo di ricapitolare (in modo sintetico) quello che sta succedendo, il testo dell’articolo qui di seguito.
Dopo avere letto questo articolo, date uno sguardo anche al grafico che abbiamo ricavato da un articolo del Financial Times che tratta del medesimo tema.
Ed infine, dopo che avete visto il grafico del Financial Times, rileggete ciò che disse il Grande Capo della Società Amundi (Fondi Comuni) solo qualche settimana, fa, a proposito della liquidità REALE e non di fantasia dei vostri Fondi Comuni.
Fatte queste tre cose, però, il nostro suggerimento è: NON fermatevi, fate qualche cosa, agite, difendetevi.
Non state lì paralizzati dalla paura: anzi congelati dalla paura, come scrive Bloomberg poco sopra.
The warning signs are piling up for investors in funds that sink their money into hard-to-sell securities. In recent months we’ve seen the demise of Neil Woodford’s business empire and a crisis at H2O Asset Management, triggered by their holdings of unlisted companies and unrated bonds. Now Woodford’s protege Mark Barnett has fallen into a similar trap, resulting in Morningstar Inc.’s downgrade of two funds he runs at Invesco Ltd.
All this drama has left unnerved investors wondering: who’s next? Here’s a timeline of the main events that brought us here:
June 3
Woodford, long one of Britain’s most celebrated money managers, stops redemptions from his flagship LF Woodford Equity Income Fund. The freeze is meant to buy him time to sell down the fund’s “unquoted and less liquid stocks” and meet the demands of clients who want their money back after a run of poor performance.
June 19
Morningstar suspends its rating of an H2O Asset Management fund, citing concerns about the “liquidity and appropriateness” of some corporate-bond holdings. H20 is a major holder of rarely traded bonds issued by companies linked to German financier Lars Windhorst. The fund also allows clients to make frequent withdrawals, creating the potential for a liquidity crunch.
June 24
Natixis SA goes into crisis-fighting mode to stem a wave of outflows from its H2O Asset Management unit, selling about 300 million euros ($332 million) of its unrated private bonds and marking down the balance to remove incentives for investors to pull even more.
June 26
Bank of England Governor Mark Carney reprimands investment funds that hold illiquid assets while allowing unlimited withdrawals. “These funds are built on a lie,” he tells Parliament, heaping pressure on Woodford and H2O.
July 1
H2O Asset Management halts an eight-day skid during which a group of six key funds plunged by more than 8 billion euros. The firm had taken steps to arrest the decline in assets by dropping entry fees for all of its funds, selling some unrated private bonds and proposing to create a so-called “deep value” fund for thinly traded assets.
July 11
Carney says Woodford’s decision to lock his main fund is “symptomatic of a broader problem.” The central bank says in a report that the mismatch created when funds offer daily redemptions while loading up on hard-to-sell assets could lead to runs, and this has the potential to become a financial-stability risk.
July 29
Woodford’s listed investment trust says it’s considering replacing him as portfolio manager, deepening his career crisis. On the same day, the administrator of his flagship fund says it may remain locked until December.
September 30
The U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority stiffens its rules for funds that invest in hard-to-sell property assets in the first major rule change since the crises that struck Woodford and H2O.
October 15
Woodford runs out of road in his attempt to salvage his investment business. The administrator of his flagship fund ousts Woodford as manager and sends it into liquidation. Woodford objects, but before the day’s done he announces that he’s shutting his firm, Woodford Investment Management. The firm terminates its agreement to manage Woodford Patient Capital Trust.
November 6
Barnett, who followed Woodford’s lead in loading up on less liquid securities, is hit with rating downgrades on two of his funds at Invesco. Morningstar cites concerns about the way he’d changed the focus of his funds to buy smaller companies that are harder to sell.
Amundi’s chief investment officer has warned the asset management sector could be on the verge of a wider liquidity crisis, amid heightened scrutiny by investors in the wake of Neil Woodford’s downfall.
“This business is a trade-off between risk, return and liquidity. We have the ingredients of looming liquidity mismatches across the industry,” said Pascal Blanqué.
The CIO’s comments reflect growing concerns that some open-ended funds could suffer the same fate as Woodford by struggling to sell some of their holdings fast enough to pay back investors.
According to Blanqué, a cause for concern is that banks have reduced their dealer and market making activity following the global financial crisis. Banks have retreated from their past role by scaling back the amount of risk they take in part because of more stringent capital requirements from regulators.
Blanqué said that banks’ diminished ability to absorb liquidity demand during selloff periods could pose wider problems for fund managers.
“We’ve seen a frantic search for yield on the buy side, pushed by [central banks’ quantitative easing programs],” said Blanqué. “The combination of a frantic search for yield, and the deterioration of market liquidity, can create mismatches.”
Blanqué’s comments come as fund liquidity has been thrown into the spotlight following liquidity problems encountered by high profile asset managers including Woodford, H2O and GAM.
In June, Morningstar suspended its bronze rating on H2O’s Allegro fund due to concerns over the liquidity of bonds linked to Lars Windhorst, the German entrepreneur with a history of bankruptcies. H2O subsequently offloaded a significant chunk of private, nonrated debt and removed entry fees in an attempt to stem investor outflows.
Woodford, once a star stock picker in the U.K., was forced to close his investment business on October 16 after being sacked as manager on his flagship £2.9bn Equity Income fund.
Link Fund Solutions, which acts as the authorized corporate director to the Equity Income fund, took the decision to suspend dealing in the vehicle on June 3 to allow some of its most illiquid holdings to be sold to pay back investors wanting to exit.
In 2018, Swiss asset manager GAM was forced to close several bond funds managed by Haywood to stem investor outflows and sell off some of the products’ most illiquid holdings to pay back investors.
Blanqué said: “There is a severe underestimation of the effective liquidity of what is supposed to be liquid.”
“At the fund level, the regulators are going in the direction where the buy side must be ready to show effective liquidity policies.
“At the corporate level, we think that asset managers are, generally speaking, under-capitalised relative to the liquidity they may face.”
He added: “The very concept of liquidity is poorly defined. You will see regulators asking buy side actors to at least be more precise about what they mean by liquidity and explain their crisis management.”