News in brief, mandates and product launches from this week

Societe Generale Securities Services has been mandated by Repsol, to provide administration services for Repsol’s international executive stock plan and to act as the agent bank and settlement provider for the employee stock plan.

MSCI has announced that it has opened a new office in Seoul, South Korea. This will enable MSCI to serve existing and prospective clients throughout the country. The investment service provider has also launched the MSCI Kukje Index, a market capitilisation weighted index designed to measure the equity market performance of developed and emerging markets.

Deutsche Bank and Financial Risk Management (FRM) have announced a partnership to launch the industry’s first hedge fund seeding managed account platform. Dbalternatives Discovery platform will identify and invest in the funds of select emerging hedge fund managers. In return for committed capital, seeding investors receive fund returns and a share of the manager’s revenue.

S&P Capital IQ fund research has announced that it has assigned ratings to five Neptune Funds. The Neptune Global Equity Fund, Neptune Russia & Greater Russia Fund and Neptune US Opportunities Fund all achieved an AA fund rating; the Neptune China Fund and Neptune Emerging Markets Fund have achieved A fund ratings.

Aquila Capital has announced that its AC Spectrum Fund has returned 6.78% since its launch in May. The Fund is a liquid futures fund and offers daily liquidity.

PIMCO has launched the PIMCO Dividend and Income Builder Fund and the PIMCO EqS Dividend Fund as part of its global equities platform. The EqS Dividend Fund is intended for investors who want an equity-focused fund while the dividend and income builder fund supplements global equity investments with select fixed income positions.

AllianceBernstein has launched its Short Duration High Yield Portfolio which invests in high-yielding securities and focuses on sub-investment grade corporate debt. The fund is managed by a team with 14 years’ experience in high yield investing and is benchmarked against the Barclays Capital Global High Yield Corporate 1-5 year BB/B index.

Aviva Investors has launched the Aviva Investors Investment Solutions Global Commodity Plus Fund in cooperation with Tiberius Asset Management AG. The fund is available in the UK, Luxembourg, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Finland. The fund enables Aviva investors to present an actively managed, long-only commodities offering in a UCITS format for the first time to professional investors.

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