Asset Managers

Investment Officer Belgium, Investment Officer Luxembourg’s sister publication, greeted the 3,000th registered reader on its platform last month. This means that a substantial part of the target audience of investment professionals, asset managers, private bankers and insurance agents in Belgium is now being reached.

Sustainable funds have grown significantly in the past few years, according to a new study. Sustainable funds’ net assets have increased by as much as 450% since 2018, rising sharply as a share of total fund assets.

Net new money invested in such funds was positive Europe-wide, up 50% in June 2021, reflecting 510% increase of net new money into sustainable funds over the 2018 level.

The private debt funds market is growing quickly in Europe and there’s more to add, commented a panel at last week’s ALFI Global Distribution Conference. The panellists discussed the attractiveness of this sector in general, particularly to the insurance industry.

Guy Wagner of Banque de Luxembourg Investments believes that Western economies will emerge weakened by the health crisis, with higher inflation and huge private debt. His fund is defensively positioned, despite an equity exposure close to 70% of assets under management.

BlackRock, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, Pictet Asset Management and Robeco were announced as the major category winners of the 2021 Broadridge Distribution Achievement Awards, presented at the ALFI Global Distribution Conference held on 21 and 22 September, according to a Wednesday press release issued by ALFI, which represents the Luxembourg fund industry.

UBS Asset Managers and Candriam Investor Group were among the “Fastest Risers”.

Managers of active funds, including hedge funds, are under increasing pressure to back up their investment ideas and performance with qualitative data. By using data science, they can better justify the level of their fees.

That’s according to a survey entitled “The Art of Alpha”, all about investment data science done by custodian bank Northern Trust among 300 CIOs and portfolio managers of asset managers around the world. 

A recently-introduced German initiative to make that country a more attractive domicile for investment funds through a new regime promoting the formation of development impact funds should not pose a challenge to Luxembourg’s fund industry, has argued Maren Stadler-Tjan, investment funds partner at Clifford Chance Luxembourg. 

Oddo BHF Asset Management and Métropole Gestion announce the acquisition by Oddo BHF Asset Management SAS of 100% of the share capital of Metropole Gestion, subject to approval by the French Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF).

This was learned by Investment Officer Belgium, Investment Officer Luxembourg’s sister publication, from the companies in question.

A worldwide increase in regulation on client reporting and the need to provide better service to clients are driving asset managers to look hard at their client reporting objectives, according to a recent opinion article by Dominique Tomassoni, product strategy director for Digital/Client/Regulatory reporting solutions at NeoXam, a French financial software company.

At the moment, the healthcare sector is still underdeveloped digitally, while the world population is getting older and more chronically ill. Nevertheless, this sector is also slowly but surely embracing the Internet of Things. Henk Grootveld sees this as a reason to invest in digital healthcare.