The German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) has started its own investigation into Allianz SE’s Structured Alpha Funds, which are at the center of lawsuits and probes in the US following steep losses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The BaFin is looking at the extent to which Allianz officials outside the Florida-based funds knew of the events leading up to the losses, said a person familiar with the matter, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal information.
Reuters reported on the BaFin probe earlier.
Officials for Allianz and BaFin declined to comment.
Allianz last month disclosed that the US Department of Justice had started a probe into the funds and warned that the matter could “materially impact” future earnings, sending shares of the insurer tumbling.
The company had already been facing lawsuits by investors alleging combined losses of about US$6 billion, as well as an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Allianz chief executive officer Oliver Baete, who has said that the insurer is fully cooperating with the US probes, has backed the Allianz Global Investors unit that housed the hedge-fund business, while pledging to take a close look at the products the unit offers to clients.
The Florida-based private hedge funds in question were designed to offer stable returns in a broad range of market conditions and provide protection against a market crash.
Two of the hedge funds were liquidated at the end of March last year and Allianz is in the process of winding down the remainder.
Allianz Global Investors, the company’s asset manager, has been defending itself from lawsuits by large pension funds and other investors, which have challenged how it invested client money during a market downturn sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Allianz told a Manhattan federal judge in February that the plaintiffs are sophisticated investors that chose high-risk private funds with their eyes open.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day