Status: 01.10.2021 14:39
After billions in losses with investment products from Allianz subsidiary AGI, US investors are suing for damages. The responsible Allianz board member is released for new corporate tasks.
About 25 institutional investors in the US, including pension funds for government employees, have sued Allianz for $ 6 billion. The reason: In spring 2020 you lost a large part of your commitment with the risky, but supposedly crisis-proof papers from Allianz-Vermögensverwaltung AGI. The “Structured Alpha Funds” lost up to three quarters of their value when the markets went to their knees in the first corona shock in March 2020. Two funds with a volume of $ 2.3 billion were liquidated.
Allianz now has to deal with at least twelve lawsuits in court. Judge Katherine Polk Failla in the New York borough of Manhattan now admitted these lawsuits, including two class actions worth four billion dollars.
“Better advertising brochure”
Specifically, one allegation by the investors is that the fund managers have tacitly taken out hedges against losses. As a result, this would mean that they had taken greater risks than had been agreed. Allianz, on the other hand, takes the position that the customers are experienced institutional investors who are aware of the risks of hedge funds.
In the 81-page decision, the district judge wrote that the investors had to prove that the asset management subsidiary Allianz Global Investors (AGI) had acted negligently and not in good faith in managing the “Structured Alpha Fund”. Failla said the plaintiffs could try to prove that Allianz breached the information in its sales records for the hedge funds.
The AGI management argued that it was a “better advertising brochure” from which Allianz could deviate at its own discretion, wrote the judge. The losses also prompted regulators in the US and Germany and the US Department of Justice to act.
Board member gives post
The billions in claims against Allianz have personnel consequences: Jacqueline Hunt, who is responsible for asset management on the Allianz Board of Management, loses her position. The 53-year-old, who has been responsible for asset management since 2016, wants to withdraw from day-to-day business, Allianz announced after a board meeting. Hunt will in future act as a “strategic advisor” to Allianz boss Oliver Bäte.
“Jacqueline Hunt had signaled her willingness to make a move some time ago,” said Bäte. The CEO of the most important subsidiary Allianz Leben, Andreas Wimmer, is now responsible for the asset management division with the asset managers Pimco and AGI.
Trillions in assets under management
Allianz, with its subsidiaries Pimco and AGI, is one of the largest asset managers in the world. In total, they manage $ 2,800 billion for their customers. The front runner in the industry is the US company BlackRock, which invests around 9,000 billion dollars in the financial markets. That is more than twice as much as the German gross domestic product in 2020, which was around 3800 billion dollars. BlackRock has become known to a wider public in this country because the CDU politician Friedrich Merz had held the post of chairman of the supervisory board of the German subsidiary.