Investment Officer

Demand for instant payments, an area in which certain corners of Europe have lagged other parts of the globe, is, according to PwC, disrupting Luxembourg’s payments ecosystem, as well as putting strain on the existing infrastructure. At the same time, innovation in B2B payments the new frontier of payments.

These changes in payments and others are taking place against the hugely increased profitability of the Luxembourg banking market, which collectively recorded a 2021 net profit of 30.8 percent.

Jean-Paul Servais has been appointed as chair of the board of the International Organisation of Securities Commissions, or Iosco, the international policy forum for securities regulators. He will replace Ashley Alder, former CEO of the Hong Kong  Securities and Futures Commission who will become chair of UK regulator FCA in January.

Luxembourg’s financial institutions need to swiftly make significant changes in order to keep up with the changing labour market if they want to continue attracting top talent, Luxembourg for Finance said in a new report on the job market.

Asset services provider Apex Group has announced a collaboration with BlackRock’s eFront to provide its ESG data consulting services to investors in private markets.

Luxembourg-based Cube Infrastructure Managers has agreed to acquire Firstcolo Datacenters GmbH, a Frankfurt-based data centre business providing colocation, dedicated servers, managed services and private cloud solutions, for an undisclosed amount.

Firstcolo owns two-state-of-the-art “Tier III+” data centres in Frankfurt (photo), both of which are powered by green electricity. 

Luxembourg’s bank clients remained conservative in 2021, keeping nearly all - or 80 percent - of their assets in savings, even when interest rates are low, a survey conducted jointly by the Luxembourg bank association ABBL and financial regulator CSSF shows.

This survey showed a significant increase in deposits and in the number of loans granted. It also confirmed underlying trends such as the increasing use of online services. The figures for employment and the number of customers remain stable. 

To preserve financial stability , EU supervisory agencies for energy markets and for financial markets on Tuesday said they will intensify their cooperation and improve their exchange of information, seeking to avoid potential market abuse in Europe’s energy and derivatives markets.

Equity markets are still overvalued despite the deep declines we have seen this year. That is the view of Andrew Balls, CIO of Pimco, world’s largest active bond investor. According to him, both a mild recession, and falling earnings expectations are not yet sufficiently priced in.

US-based Strive Asset Management knows how to address sentiment among a section of Americans. Strive launched two ETFs this week. One is called “God Bless America” with the ticker symbol YALL. The other ETF has the ticker DRLL and invests mainly in oil and gas (76 per cent). They have since been dubbed as anti-woke ETFs in the media.

BlackRock finds itself caught in a tug of war in US politics over its approach to sustainable investing.

On the one hand, there are Republican-led states that believe the world’s largest asset manager is hostile to the carbon-focused industry. On the other hand, there are Democrat-led governments that believe BlackRock is backtracking on its commitment to addressing climate issues.