Asset Managers

Candriam Group, a New York Life investments company, said it has agreed to buy a majority-stake in pan-European real estate investment manager Tristan Capital Partners. Financial details were not disclosed.

Candriam already owns 31 percent of Tristan, With the new agreement its stake will increase to 80 percent by the middle of this year. The remaining 20 percent of Tristan will continue to be held by its senior team. 

Pictet Asset Management has announced the launch of Pictet-ReGeneration, a Luxembourg-domiciled concentrated global equity fund investing in companies aiding the transition to a regenerative economy. The fund is the latest addition to Pictet AM’s Thematic franchise, which now has a combined assets under management of some 62 billion dollars.

DWS, the asset management arm of Deutsche Bank, on Monday said that Olivier Dubost de Cadalvène, currently head of DWS in France, Middle East & Africa, has taken up the additional responsibility for Luxembourg. The appointment coincides with the appointment of Arjen Jonk as country head in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Index products have seen significant inflows at the expense of active products, reflecting increasing interest from both institutional and retail investors. The outlook for Europe remains positive in the coming years. Bond ETFs in particular still have strong growth ahead of them.

Last year was a tough one for financial markets, and the ETF segment was not left behind as assets under management - at the global level - fell for the first time since 2011. 

For investors in listed real estate who are deeply concerned about growth slowdowns and increased financing costs, 2022 is a year that will not soon be forgotten. For this week’s Top-5, we look at the best-performing global real estate funds in 2022. 

Luxembourg alternative investment fund manager FundRock, part of the Apex Group, has been given a fine of 45,800 euro by Luxembourg’s financial regulator CSSF because the firm did not properly apply the rules relating to benchmarks.

Private markets, in particular those for digital infrastructure investments, continue to appeal to European institutional investors, according to a global survey among 480 institutional investors presented on Tuesday by State Street. The survey also shows that European investors are a bit more reluctant than others to invest in private equity.

Economists at PGIM Fixed Income have suggested converting Ukraine’s dire debt obligations into new debt. These so-called “freedom bonds” could be backed by frozen Russian assets, according to the bond house. Such a proposal would receive great interest in Luxembourg, home to about one third of Russian assets frozen in the EU.

The year 2022 will go down in the books as a pitch-black year for investors. A cocktail of worrying developments, including a spike in inflation, tightening monetary policy, the economic implications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an energy crisis and recession fears, resulted in a historically bad investment year in which both equity and bond investors suffered hefty losses.

A major shift in the Dutch retail investor market. Netherlands’ largest fund house Robeco decides to focus entirely on institutional and wholesale investors and, with pain in its heart, says goodbye to retail investors. With the takeover, Evi van Lanschot suddenly comes of age.

In one fell swoop, Evi, the retail arm of investment bank Van Lanschot Kempen, gains 125,000 new clients. That is a six-fold increase in the client base. Assets under management jump from 1.3 billion euros to six billion.