Investment Officer

The latest round of greenwashing allegations targets Luxembourg’s banks and their investment funds. Greenpeace, presenting a mystery shopping survey, now claims Luxembourg’s financial centre is “guilty of greenwashing”.  Bank sector group ABBL challenges Greenpeace’s approach. Meanwhile, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has fiercely condemned private sector behaviour that uses “bogus net-zero pledges”.

By successfully closing its acquisition of European Fund Administration, Universal Investment has pushed its assets under administration by more than a fifth to above 900 billion euro in more than 7000 funds, the firm has announced. Financial details were not disclosed.

It has been a dire and highly volatile stock market year so far. The opportunity for active investors to make a difference and outsmart the market. Fine words notwithstanding, more than three quarters of active managers have failed again this year. “The biggest cause of active funds’ failure is their inability to survive.”

This is according to the latest Morningstar European Active/Passive Barometer, a semi-annual report that compares the performance of European-based active funds with passive funds in their respective Morningstar categories.

No this column is not about sustainability, climate targets or Co2 emissions. But about the fable that energy companies are a reason why broad market profits need not fall.

Energy profits

Earnings-per-share of US energy companies included in the S&P 500 Index are up more than 250% from a year ago. But this does not disguise a fall in profits of the rest of the companies.

While the upgrade of SFDR funds is still in full swing, light green funds did not escape this year’s market violence. Article 6 and Article 8 funds saw a hefty outflow of assets. The greenest funds did manage to attract new assets.

Article 8 funds saw net outflows of 28.7 billion euros in the third quarter of 2022. This was reported by Morningstar in a press release this week. Article 6 funds clearly lost out with an outflow of 62.1 billion euros, according to the financial services provider’s data.

Luxembourg financial regulator CSSF today announced that it had found “satisfactory” both market participants’ understanding of the risks of AML/CFT activities and the related mitigation measures that they had put into place, in a recent thematic review of money-laundering or terrorism financing checks by its on-site inspection unit.

Luxempart, a private equity firm listed on the Luxembourg bourse, said on Thursday that it has generated a “significant” investment return by selling the bulk of its stake in Swiss diagnostic radiology firm Rimed to diagnostic services provider Unilabs.

A Kenya-based fintech-agritech firm called Hello Tractor has emerged as the winner of the fifth edition of Catapult: Inclusion Africa, a week-long financial inclusion bootcamp that is part of an accelerator programme developed by the Luxembourg House of Financial Technology.

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” .

Following regulatory approval, Apex Group has completed its acquisition of Darwin Depositary Services, an Amsterdam-based provider of depositary services to alternative investment funds, the company announced this morning. Financial details were not disclosed.