Over the past week, there’s been the usual raft of fund launches and manager moves, alongside the bigger headlines such as Greece deferring a payment to the IMF and chancellor George Osborne announcing that there will be £3bn worth of spending cuts to unprotected government departments this year.
FE Trustnet has rounded up some of the stories that have been making the investment world’s headlines over the past seven days.
Sanditon launches UK fund for Julie Dean
Sanditon Asset Management plans to launch a UK equity fund for star manager Julie Dean later this month, using the business cycle approach that built her track record at Cazenove and Schroders. 
The TM Sanditon UK fund will launch on 22 June with the aim of returning 2 per cent a year more than the FTSE All Share over rolling three-year periods.
Dean said: “I will manage this new fund following exactly the same business cycle philosophy I have used for more than 15 years, an approach whose key characteristic is understanding correlation of returns and which remains as powerful as it has ever been.”
“I am confident that this process will continue to generate very competitive returns and that my new fund will be a compelling new entrant in the IMA UK All Companies sector. I look forward to commencing the joust!”
Earlier in the week, FE Trustnet asked the experts whether investors should be flocking to put money into the new fund.
Lloyds hit with record £117m fine for PPI scandal
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has fined Lloyds Banking Group £117m, its largest ever retail fine, for failing to treat customers fairly when handling payment protection insurance (PPI) complaints.
Between March 2012 and May 2013, the group’s Lloyds Bank, Bank of Scotland and Black Horse businesses assessed customer complaints relating to more than 2.3 million PPI policies and ended up rejecting 37 per cent of those complaints.
During this time, staff assessing the complaints were told that the group’s PPI sales process was robust, leading to some customers have their claims rejected without being fully investigated. However, there were known failures in the process.
Georgina Philippou, acting director of enforcement and market oversight at the FCA said: “PPI complaint handling is a high priority issue for the FCA. If trust in financial services is going to be restored following the widespread mis-selling of PPI, then customers need to be confident that their complaints will be treated fairly.”
“The size of the fine today reflects the fact that so many complaints were mishandled by Lloyds. Customers who had already been treated unfairly once by being mis-sold PPI were treated unfairly a second time and denied the redress they were owed. Lloyds’ conduct was unacceptable.”
Schroders makes five hires for fixed income team
Schroders has hired five investment professionals for its fixed income global multi-sector team, which is led by head of global macro Bob Jolly.
Paul Grainger will join the firm in June as a senior investment manager. Grainger has more than more than 18 years’ investment experience with a background in global aggregate and interest rate investing and joins from Wellington Management, where he was a fixed income portfolio manager.
Mads Nielsen will also join in June, acting as a quantitative strategist in the team. He was most recently at GLG Partners, where he worked on a number of macro and total return strategies, and has over 15 years’ experience in quantitative analytics.
David Gottlieb, Vincent Messina, and Whitney Tindale – most recently at Wave Asset Management, a firm they collectively founded in 2014 – joined Schroders in May. Based in New York, they will run a specialised strategy focused on relative value opportunities, primarily in US rates markets.
Jolly said: “Expanding the depth of talent within Schroders’ global macro team is about diversifying our sources of alpha. Hiring people with different skills and approaches is a way of increasing the consistency of returns for our clients. We welcome Paul, Mads, David, Vince and Whitney to the team.”
BNY Mellon to launch GEM fund for retail investors
BNY Mellon Investment Management has unveiled plans to merge the Newton Global Emerging Markets fund into its UK-domiciled BNY Mellon Investment Funds UCITS range.
The proposals, which are subject to shareholder approval, come on the back of increasing investor demand for the fund in the wholesale market and the changes are expected to come in on 25 July. Previously, it was only available to institutional investors.
Newton Global Emerging Markets is managed by Rob Marshall-Lee and alternate manager Sophia Whitbread. It has returned 6.9 per cent a year since Marshall-Lee was appointed to the portfolio in May 2011 and has outperformed the MSCI Emerging Markets index over this time.
Fergus McCarthy, co-head of UK intermediary distribution at BNY Mellon Investment Management EMEA, said: “We have been looking at ways to make a successful emerging markets strategy more widely available to wholesale investors.”
“Rob and his team have an outstanding track record managing emerging market equities, and under the expanded team of seven investment professionals, they will continue to focus on delivering top performance for clients.”
“The fund has already started to generate a lot of interest with consultants, ratings agencies and discretionary investment managers and is, we believe, an excellent alternative to capacity-constrained emerging market equity funds in the market.”
TISA warns on MiFID II’s impact on private investors
Europe’s Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II (MiFID II) regulations could ultimately reduce the choice of investment products for private investors, according to the Tax Incentivised Savings Association (TISA).
The original MiFID aimed to strengthen the single market for investment services and activities, resulting in better investor protection and increased competition in EU financial markets. The second iteration, which is being prepared for implementation in the UK, take into account the financial crisis and technological advances since the original.
Part of the directive sets out rules on how firms which make or distribute investment products should act in the best interest of their clients. Some groups such as TISA agree with the need to protect investors but point out that there could be negative consequences to the rules.
TISA technical director Jeffrey Mushens said: “TISA supports consistency of regulation throughout the retail investment market. However, our chief concern is that the practical implementation of MiFID II could result in unintended consequences by reducing the options for the consumer in the range of investment choice and also in the type of provider.”
“It could also impact the implementation of new technology by limiting the number of investments available to the consumer to purchase without advice. This would mean that those who do not want to pay for advice would be particularly affected.”
