Alfi

In the face of market volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity, a combination popularly referred to as ‘VUCA’, Ingo Mainert, CIO Multi Asset Europe at Allianz Global Investors, urges investors to embrace a fresh interpretation of VUCA: vision, understanding, clarity, and agility. 

This perspective came during his keynote speech at Wednesday’s ALFI Roadshow in Frankfurt, a gathering organised by Luxembourg’s 1700-member fund management trade association. The event provided a platform for industry experts to exchange insights on the investment climate and topics pertinent to Luxembourg, attracting roughly 300 delegates.

Jean-Marc Goy has been appointed as the new Chairperson of the Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry (ALFI), the industry body announced on Monday following its annual general meeting. Goy is a board member at Capital Group Luxembourg. Before joining the firm in 2018 he served two decades at the grand duchy’s financial supervisor CSSF.

The focus on sustainable investing has faded somewhat, with the drumbeat of crisis after crisis recently, and now problems with banks in Switzerland and the United States grabbing the headlines. But listen to anyone focussed on the climate for long and you’ll realise that however bad things are now, it will get much worse. Large investment firms are developing impact investing projects and reaching for the next level in ESG – maintaining biodiversity.

At this week’s Alfi European Asset Management Conference in Luxembourg, Emmanuel Gutton, Alfi’s director of legal and tax, spoke to Investment Officer’s Raymond Frenken for this edition of IO Talks Luxembourg. The topic: European Long Term Investment Funds, a new type of investment fund known as Eltifs that opens the door to private equity and alternatives to a wider group of investors, in particular wealth management clients and the “retail plus” segment. Luxembourg is keen to become a European ánd global hub for these funds.

As the European Union considers banning inducements (aka kickbacks) for investment advice as part of its forthcoming retail investment strategy, those who support inducements, like Luxembourg’s ALFI and the worldwide CFA Institute, but also strong critics of inducements, such as the EU’s commissioner for financial services Mairead McGuinness and EU investor and financial service users organisation Better Finance are making their widely divergent views known. 

The Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry, the grand duchy’s leading fund and asset management association known as Alfi, turns 35 this year. It’s a milestone to be marked at its upcoming European Asset Management conference on Tuesday 21 and Wednesday 22 March. 

Luxembourg’s leading financial sector associations, together with the supervisory authorities and the government, are about to launch a public campaign that seeks to elucidate the general public in the grand duchy on sustainable finance. 

In particular, the campaign aims to make clear that sustainable investing is more than just environmental ‘green finance’ and that ESG investing also relates to social issues and the governance of companies.

Luxembourg’s fund and asset management association Alfi has told Europe’s financial markets supervisor Esma that its proposed rules on the use of ESG-related names in investment fund names lack clarity and will render the marketing of these funds more difficult.

Britta Borneff, a former managing director at Fuchs Asset Management, has been appointed as the new director of events, communications and business development at the Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry, Alfi. 

Borneff’s professional career in Luxembourg started in 1996 with Schroders where she worked in marketing and client relationship roles for more than a decade. From 2007 to 2021 she worked as head of sales and marketing at Waystone in Luxembourg. From October 2021 she served at Fuchs, a Luxembourg investment firm,

Luxembourg’s fund industry has high hopes for Eltif 2.0, the revised European regime for long-term investment funds that is set to be approved next month by the European Parliament. Thanks to the updated rules, products like private funds can be targeted directly at retail investors in all 30 countries in the European Economic Area with one single AIFM passport.