Asset Managers

Luxembourg-based Cube Infrastructure Managers has agreed to acquire Firstcolo Datacenters GmbH, a Frankfurt-based data centre business providing colocation, dedicated servers, managed services and private cloud solutions, for an undisclosed amount.

Firstcolo owns two-state-of-the-art “Tier III+” data centres in Frankfurt (photo), both of which are powered by green electricity. 

ESG isn’t a project. It isn’t about appointing a team who can bolt sustainability on to an asset management operation. To win the trust of investors, staff, regulators, civil society, the press, ESG must be embedded in strategy, the LuxFLAG Sustainable Investment Week 2022 was told on Monday.

BlackRock finds itself caught in a tug of war in US politics over its approach to sustainable investing.

On the one hand, there are Republican-led states that believe the world’s largest asset manager is hostile to the carbon-focused industry. On the other hand, there are Democrat-led governments that believe BlackRock is backtracking on its commitment to addressing climate issues. 

BlocHome, a Luxembourg blockchain real estate investment platform, has arranged a guarantee that will allow it to finance the first security token-based residential project in Europe, an eight million euro housing project in Luxembourg known as the “Clapton Residence”, without waiting for further fund-raising. The guarantee was arranged after the firms’s first project attracted 2.15 million euros in tokenised investments from 280 investors.

Investment funds that hold illiquid, hard-to-sell assets and that calculate their net asset value on a daily basis can trigger volatility and add to the impact of shocks in financial markets, especially in turbulent times, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a policy note addressed to the financial community. 

Sustainable investing may be taking the wider investment fund world by storm, especially in Europe. But when it comes to liquid alternative funds, the sustainable wave is less advanced.

Some in the liquid alternative space remain openly dismissive of sustainability as an investment principle. Certain liquid alternative providers use derivatives,  making it more difficult to integrate sustainability criteria. Derivatives are excluded from the EU’s Taxonomy.

For Zurich-based Serpentine Ventures, a venture asset manager, Luxembourg is a key gateway to reaching international investors. The firm is leveraging the grand duchy’s regime for alternative investment funds for four of its venture capital funds that nurture Swiss startups.

Nuveen Infrastructure’s Glennmont Partners, a major clean energy infrastructure manager, on Thursday said it has raised 250 million euro through its energy transition enhanced credit II strategy, or ETEC II, based on a Luxembourg alternative fund.

The ETEC II fund is one of the new Reserved Alternative Investment Funds, or Raifs, that were officially registered in Luxembourg this month. 

​​​​​​​Ambitions to build on Luxembourg’s global hub status for investment funds to make this country a global fund distribution centre are being held back by differing national approaches on regulations as well as prudential rules, despite efforts to harmonise European legislation and the EU’s cross-border fund framework. 

“Capital markets are in complete disarray and we are detecting structural changes,” said Ewout van Schaick, head of multi assets at NN Investment Partners, talking to InvestmentOfficer.nl in a podcast interview.