(Adds background, data, quote) By Maiya Keidan TORONTO, April 18 (Reuters) - Canada’s Desjardins Group is seeking acquisitions in the property and casualty (P&C) insurance space as it seeks to boost its presence across the country, CEO Guy Cormier told Reuters on Tuesday. Cormier said the Quebec-based cooperative financial group is mainly looking at opportunities in Canada where it feels the industry is ripe for consolidation. "We are in acquisition mode and we are in discussion with some...

LONDON (Reuters) - A cluster of big name hedge funds have started betting against French companies, moving in after the lifting of a short-selling ban imposed earlier this year to calm financial markets, an analysis of regulatory filings showed. France joined Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria and Greece in dropping short-selling bans last week. They had banned the practice for many stocks two months ago to curb extreme stock market volatility caused by economic uncertainty that has resulted from...

LONDON (Reuters) - Invesco Ltd (IVZ.N) said money manager Mark Barnett would leave the company after 24 years, ending a tough couple of years in which clients pulled billions from his funds. Barnett was impacted by the high-profile collapse of former Invesco colleague Neil Woodford’s firm, after it turned the spotlight on their shared and long-standing p, actice of holding relatively large positions in illiquid assets, which may be hard to sell quickly. Woodford ultimately chose to close his...

LONDON (Reuters) - European hedge funds struggled to navigate the coronavirus-induced extreme market volatility during March, with many down by double-digits in the space of a few weeks as short-selling bans hampered their strategies. Regulators in France, Italy, Belgium and Spain ordered temporary short-selling bans to stop investors betting on a fall in the share price of companies ranging from Spanish bank Santander to Air France-KLM and Italian automaker Fiat Chrysler. Short-selling is a...

LONDON (Reuters) - Lansdowne Partners, one of Britain’s best-known hedge fund firms, lost money on several of its strategies between the start of the year and early March amid the coronavirus market slump, according to data compiled by HSBC. Lansdowne’s $3.9 bln Developed Markets Fund lost 1.3% in the month to March 6 and 12.1% for the year-to-date, according to HSBC’s data, which was seen by Reuters. The $686m European Opportunities Fund lost 1.78% in the month to March 6 and 7.58% YTD while...