Investment Officer

Pictet Asset Management advises its clients to remain underweight in equities and maintained an overweight view on US Treasury bonds. In its latest market outlook, the Swiss-based firm said it reduced the risk in its portfolio by downgrading Chinese stocks to neutral.

Luxembourg-based Quintet Private Bank on Sunday said it remains committed to its InsingerGilissen unit in the Netherlands after news emerged at the weekend of another major departure of one of its investment teams, the second such exit in the space of two weeks.

Investor confidence in Europe jumped in August and reached its highest level since January last year, according to the latest State Street Investor Confidence Index.

The investor confidence index, or ICI, for Europe jumped 20.4 points to 106 in August. Investor confidence in North America also increased, although merely 2.1 points to 106.5. The global investor confidence index rose to 107.3 in August, up from 102.2 in July.

European investment funds continued to experience net outflows for a sixth consecutive month as investors withdrew twice as much from Ucits and alternative investment funds during June compared to May, according to the European Fund and Asset Management Association, Efama. 

Net sales of Ucits and AIF funds registered net outflows of 72 billion euro, compared to net outflows of 36 billion euro in May, the association said. Ucits recorded net outflows of 69 billion euro, compared to net outflows of 33 billion euro in May.

Luxempart, a Luxembourg-based investment and private equity company, on Wednesday said it has acquired a 8.4 percent stake in Nexus AG, a German-based publicly listed hospital software provider in Europe through a capital increase of 72.5 million euro.

Dividends worldwide rose by 11.3 percent in nominal terms in the second quarter of 2022 to a historic quarterly record of 544.8 billion dollars, the latest Global Dividend Index report by Janus Henderson shows. 

If the strong US dollar and other underlying factors are taken into account, underlying growth is even stronger at 19.1 percent. Some 94 percent of companies surveyed either paid out more in the second quarter or kept payouts stable.

Cube Infrastructure Managers, a Luxembourg-based infrastructure investor, has agreed to take over the Czech activities of Germany energy firm MVV Energie AG for an undisclosed amount. The transaction would  be done through Cube IM’s “Cube Infrastructure Fund III” brownfield fund.

Marc Peter Klein will join Deutsche Börse as Managing Director Group Compliance on 1 January 2023. 

Global asset manager Invesco has launched an actively managed, 30 million dollar investment fund focused on metaverse companies. The Invesco Metaverse Fund will be domiciled in Luxembourg and will be distributed to investors across Europe.

The metaverse is defined as a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users. Virtual and augmented reality has the potential to add some 1.7 billion euro to the world economy and approximately 23 million jobs by 2030, according to consultancy PwC.

A Rotterdam-based investment team of four people representing InsingerGilissen, part of Luxembourg-based private bank Quintet, has transferred to Auréus, an independent Dutch asset manager that has been gaining scale through acquisitions and alliances in recent years.