Max Severijns

That Japan unexpectedly slipped into recession will make the market care. Profits of listed companies are soaring, and share prices are peaking. Investors say there is much more in store, but the yen must continue to cooperate.

Goldman Sachs already refers to the “Seven Samurai” in its notes to clients, alluding to the classic Akira Kurosawa film, later remade in the US as “The Magnificent Seven.”

Investors have been liquidating billions of euros in assets in European real estate funds for a year now. German investors in particular have been remarkably active in selling their property positions.

Artificial intelligence and semiconductor stocks rallied late Wednesday during after-hours trading after Nvidia wowed Wall Street with its Q4 earnings. Investors seem to bet on more demand for “picks-and-shovels” in today’s AI-gold rush, echoing dot-com optimism according to some. 

Tokenisation is the next step for the asset management industry. So says not only Larry Fink, Blackrock’s CEO, but also Jeroen van Oerle, manager of Lombard Odier’s fintech strategy. He sees the potential impact mainly in private markets.

Not only the US commercial real estate market is struggling with historically low prices due to interest rate hikes and the trend of working from home. Europe, too, is in trouble.

The Bank of England (BoE) this week reiterated its concerns about the risks of higher interest rates and limited data disclosure in private credit markets. Harvey Schwartz, CEO of The Carlyle Group with some 380 billion dollars under management, believes those concerns are exaggerated.

While Wall Street is pulling out all the stops to curb ‘Basel III Endgame’, private lenders are in pole position for implementation of the banking rules. The price at which US big banks can borrow money will be skillfully undercut by private credit funds, but critics in the banking sector denounce the lack of effective supervision of the ‘non-bank’ lenders.  

Republicans in the US state of New Hampshire have introduced a bill that makes the consideration of ESG criteria by sovereign wealth funds a crime. Under the proposal, this offence could be punishable by imprisonment for not less than one year and not more than 20 years.

In the private equity (PE) market, a significant shift is occurring as Limited Partners (LPs) increasingly demand the release of funds from older investments before considering new commitments. This change comes amidst a backdrop of unprecedented levels of “dry powder” - uninvested capital within PE firms.

Support from the world’s preeminent asset managers for shareholder proposals concentrating on environmental and social concerns has plummeted to an unprecedented nadir in 2023. This steep decline is predominantly attributable to Anglo-Saxon entities.