News

For a country that is well established as a global leader in investment funds, one might expect its people to embrace more risk when it comes to their financial investments. As it turns out, the love for cash deposits is as big as ever.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma), the EU’s securities markets regulator based in Paris, said on Tuesday that it continues to see high risks to institutional and retail investors of further, possibly significant, market corrections. 

Supervisors ESMA and EIOPA are “closely monitoring” cyber risks in Europe’s asset management industry amid concerns that rising tensions over Ukraine may spark Russian-backed cyber attacks on Europe’s economic infrastructure.

A leading German economist on Monday urged investors not to exaggerate financial risks around a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying an invasion would merely lead to a “temporary setback” while underlining the need to put the Russia risk into perspective.

“All in all, we would expect the European economy and markets to rebound shortly afterwards from a temporary setback which a Russian attack on the Ukraine would probably cause,” said Holger Schmieding, Chief economist at German private bank Berenberg. “Let’s hope it does not come to that.”

In the search for yield, some high yield investors are shifting to a broader mandate to invest in “below B”, the riskiest segment of high yield. PGIM recently repositioned two high yield funds to invest in CCC and CC bonds.

Infrastructure is becoming a must in all portfolios. It is a decorative asset. Private companies are helping along with governments to achieve this. Whitehelm Capital’s fund continues to perform strongly and should benefit from major investment programmes in the major developed countries. 

La Financière de L’Echiquier (LFDE) wants to gain a foothold in the Netherlands, following in the footsteps of Belgium and Luxembourg. The boutique manager from France focuses on medium-sized pension funds and wholesale in the Netherlands. The French argue that their niche thematic strategies can offer added value as a ‘satellite’ in the asset allocation of such parties.

Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine that sent global stock markets higher on Monday prompted double digit gains in value stocks while growth companies saw their share prices tumble. Is this the long-awaited rotation to value?

Financial and insurance businesses in Luxembourg have been denied access to the Covid-19 partial unemployment aid. They are probably also ineligible for the new package to support the economic recovery.

When Luxembourg implemented partial unemployment on 18 March to support companies and their employees impacted by the COVID-19 crisis, around 320 claims from financial and insurance institutions for a total of €47.7 million were rejected by the authorities.