News

The construction industry and real estate are about to change, and so investing in property tech (or proptech) start-ups now is a good investment strategy. That’s the idea behind Rise PropTech Fund.

LuxFlag, the Luxembourg Finance Labelling Agency, raised awareness to market challenges faced in the impact investing space at a side event held on Monday at the EIB Benelux Pavillion at COP27 which is being held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. The event featured speakers familiar with the challenges of making investments with real impact and of the best way to move forward with sustainable finance.

Even clients with the most defensive risk profile stand to lose more than -12 per cent at Dutch asset managers this year. “Defensive clients have 2008 experience in their portfolios. And according to many, we are not even at the exit yet.”

Companies cannot economise on cyber security: the dangers have become far too great today. Yet the entire sector fell on the stock market as much as the overall tech market. Erik Swords, manager of the Allianz Cyber Security fund since October 2021, thinks this means that it is a good time to take a closer look at the sector.

Chances of a real turn in short-term interest rate policy seem to have been squandered since yesterday. According to specialists at Aegon AM, PGIM and T. Rowe Price, interest rates will remain high for several more quarters. A quick reversal in interest rate policy is unlikely. So is an early return to “normal” .

Luxembourg financial supervisor CSSF, a long-time ally for Luxembourg’s booming fund industry, is drawing reluctant criticism from some people in the sector over its recently announced initiative to review pricing mechanisms for Ucits and AIF investment funds. Responding to press questions in this context, the finance ministry signalled that “certain features” of Luxembourg’s fund legislation will be modernised “in the near future”.

Amundi Group’s distribution platform Fund Channel has taken Caceis on board as a shareholder and now to plans to accelerate its growth in distribution in order to deliver on its ambition of nearly doubling its assets under intermediation by the end of 2025.  

Amundi is Europe’s  largest asset manager with some 1.86 trillion euro in assets under management. Since 2005, the firm has offered an open-architecture fund distribution platform called Fund Channel, designed as B2B platform for financial intermediaries.

The European Central Bank as expected announced a 75-basis-point interest rate hike on Thursday. It is the third consecutive increase this year. The move came as no surprise to markets.

The central bank updated its wording of the forward guidance, indicating that further tightening is to be expected, but will be done on a meeting-by-meeting basis. At the press conference, following the board meeting, President Lagarde elaborated on the time lag between monetary policy decisions and the subsequent effects on economic data. 

Chinese stocks are in a sell-off following Xi Jinping’s power grab. “Tighter state control of the Chinese economy warrants a higher risk premium.”

Have financial markets reached a bottom yet? Or is there more room on the downside? Investors, keen to find out how close to the bottom markets are, will be looking at Frankfurt on Thursday where the European Central Bank will again shed its lights on efforts to bring inflation under control. Will ECB President Christine Lagarde’s comments hold clues on where markets might move next?