Raymond Frenken

Animated movies. German real estate. Trade finance. Polish mortgages. Industrial lasers. Environmental intelligence. Pharmaceutical services. More than 1.5 billion euro has been invested in the Luxembourg-domiciled alternative investment funds under the wings of Fuchs Asset Management. Its AIFM portfolio presents a small microcosm of alternative investments managed via the Grand Duchy. The manco is for sale after its parent company, Fuchs & Associes, entered liquidation last month. Jean-Jacques Lava, deputy-CEO at Fuchs AM, said the sale process is going according to plan.

Unlike Luxembourg, financial supervisors in Belgium and the Netherlands see no need for a diligent review of fund valuation practices, spokespeople have told Investment Officer. In Ireland, meanwhile, the supervisor is preparing a “broader industry communication” on the valuation of funds that will be published in the coming months.

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Luxembourg’s financial watchdog, the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), has set a deadline of December 31, 2023, for investment funds and their managers to conduct comprehensive assessments of their valuation frameworks and to update these where necessary.

The tone of a central bank’s communication matters for asset prices, according to a new European Central Bank study demonstrating the impact of words used to describe the context for monetary policy. The ECB has developed a specific indicator to measure the tone of its policy messages compared to the Federal Reserve.

Ciaran Fitzpatrick of State Street Institutional Services paints a vibrant picture of the evolving landscape for Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs). Across the investment world, the move from active to passive is not just a trend but a shift that is being felt across retail and institutional investments, largely due to persistent pressure on costs. Ireland and Luxembourg present different appeals to new issuers.

Indosuez, the wealth management arm of French bank Credit Agricole, has agreed to acquire a majority stake in Degroof Petercam from six Belgian families that wanted to sell their shares in Belgium’s largest private bank. The transaction will create a European wealth and asset management firm with some 200 billion euro in assets under management.

The European Commission this week disappointed sustainable investment organisations by ignoring their collective call for mandatory reporting requirements that would force companies to make public core indicators for their non-financial sustainability performance.

This week’s overview of people transfers and appointments in the fund and asset management industry includes new moves at Axa Investment Managers, Apex Group, Ocorian, Pinsent Masons, Columbia Threadneedle, Gen II Fund Services, Crestbridge, Baker McKenzie and Capex.com.

Investment managers are shifting fund investments towards Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) at the expense of traditional mutual funds. The shifts are clearly visible both in Ireland and Luxembourg, Europe’s two leading hubs for ETFs, according to insights from LSEG Lipper. BlackRock was the biggest-selling fund promoter in the first half, accounting for more than half of all European ETF inflows.