HSBC hands funds to Louvre

HSBC will use Louvre Gestion, funds arm of recently integrated Parisian institution, Banque du Louvre, as the investment process of choice for French private banking clients. This is a blow for the existing proprietary process, HSBC Multimanager.

The Louvre Gestion team, boasting a 12-year track record since launching France’s first fund of funds in 1991, will run E13bn.

Louvre had a 20-strong asset allocation and fund selection team before the merger – running 12 funds of funds using 23 external managers – but has suffered losses.

Head of strategy, Thierry Callault – an original member of the PWM fund selection panel – has resurfaced at insurance group, Ofivalmo. The bank’s founder, Guillaume Dard, has parted company with HSBC. French finance gossips expect a re-appearance at the helm of a rival such as Rothschild or Lazard. Friends say he is “on holiday, thinking”.

But key senior staff, including Henri de Déserts, now chairman of the board of HSBC Private Bank, have been integrated into the new structure.

The Louvre fund selection process sits alongside the services of SEI, contracted by HSBC Republic earlier this year. “Competencies in the HSBC group will be utilised in a complimentary, optimal way,” Bogdan Simescu, head of quantitative research at HSBC Private Bank told PWM’s Open Architecture Forum in London. “We cover France and SEI cover the UK and Switzerland.”