Morgan Stanley Investment Management is launching a US Active Factor Equity Fund, registered in Luxembourg.

The asset manager said the fund launch was response to increasing demand from investors for “concentrated and core products globally and in the US”.

It said it was the first SICAV fund for European investors the applied equity advisers investment team had launched.

The team’s approach combines factor-based investing with dynamic stock selection.

It had $5.1bn (€4.6bn) in assets under management across its strategies as of 31 March.

The fund will be typically allocated 100% to US equities but can invest up to 20% in non-US equities.

A “global core” version of the portfolio is in the pipeline for release later in July.

The new fund is not yet widely available for sale and is awaiting registration in various markets, according to Morgan Stanley.

For an in-depth discussion of investing in US equities, see the July/August edition of IPE magazine

In other news, Legal & General Capital, the direct investment arm of Legal & General Group, is to sell its majority interest in The Liberation Group, a pubs and brewery group, to Caledonia Investments.

The sale price was not disclosed, but the transaction values the whole of Liberation at £118m (€138.7m), according to Legal & General.

The latter’s stake in the business has been through LGV Capital, which provided the equity for the 2008 management buy-in that led to the creation of Liberation.

Elsewhere, Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek has become a shareholder of the holding company of French asset manager Tikehau IM.

The Peugeot family’s investment company FFP has also become an investor.

They acquired their shares as part of a €94m rights issue that gives them each a stake of more than 5% of Tikehau Capital Advisors (TCA).

Tikehau also raised €416m of capital through the early conversion of convertible bonds issued last year and a rights issue; this was via Tikehau Capital Partners, the long-term investment company of Tikehau Capital. 

Tikehau is majority-owned by its managers.

Crédit Mutuel and Amundi are among other institutional shareholders in TCA. 

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