Asset Servicing

The popularity of digital assets will lead to significant changes for the financial industry, including within the area of asset custody. Today’s global custody industry goes back to regulatory changes in the 1970s. Digital assets, the most well-known being Bitcoin, differ in several ways from traditional assets, including the role of information technology, specifically of private key management, which will be accompanied by potential regulatory differences.

Asset services provider Apex Group said it has been appointed by Israel-based OurCrowd, a global venture capital investment platform, to provide fund services and to help attract investors in Australia and New Zealand. Formed in 2013, OurCrowd is Israel’s most active venture capital firm, having deployed over 1.8 billion dollars in committed capital to date. 

Even as limited trading resumed on Moscow’s exchange on Thursday, prospects for emerging market funds exposed to Russia remained cloudy as determining accurate asset values continued to be nearly impossible. Fund managers now await guidance from financial supervisors before taking next steps on suspended funds.

Luxembourg is discussing the innovative use of a particular liquidity management tool known as “side pockets” in order to deal with the suspensions of investment funds with significant exposure to Russia.

The head of Luxembourg’s top financial regulator on Tuesday called on the country’s asset management industry to step up its efforts and make sure that Russian oligarchs don’t evade sanctions by hiding their money in European investment funds.

M&G Investments is preparing to transform its Luxembourg hub for further growth in Europe with the objective of generating half of total group revenue within the next few years, its managing director Micaela Forelli told Investment Officer Luxembourg.

A comprehensive review by the European Commission has the potential to put the European long-term investment funds (Eltif) regime back on track and set it up for the kind of success Ucits funds have experienced. Eltifs can become competitive with AIFs by removing many factors that made Eltif take-up much lower than had initially been hoped. The investment community has been broadly supportive of the reset.

For a second time in two years, investment fund managers have been ordered to directly report significant redemptions as the CSSF, the Grand Duchy’s financial supervisor, stepped up its monitoring of the impact from the war in Ukraine and the international sanctions against Russia.

The financial industry often baulked at the tens of billions of euros it pays for EU’s comprehensive regulation framework put in place post 2008 financial crisis. With markets in turmoil over Russia-Ukraine, that tone now is different.

Starlight Capital, a China-based venture capital group founded in 2021, has picked Apex Group to provide it with fund administration and corporate services, the companies announced on Monday.

Apex, active in the Luxembourg fund services ecosystem also with FundRock and LRI Invest, said it will service Starlight’s latest funds and provide it with its eFront software solution that will enhance efficiency and reporting transparency through a robust and scalable platform.