Investment Officer

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. 

Former UBS director James Purcell has left Luxembourg-based private bank Quintet and joined Credit Suisse as head of sustainability. Purcell will report directly to ​​Credit Suisse’s chief sustainability officer, Emma Crystal.

After more than a decade at UBS, Purcell in 2020 joined Quintet as group head of sustainable, thematic and impact investments. At UBS he held similar positions between 2009 and 2020. His appointment at Credit Suisse took effect this month.

Luxembourg-based investment services provider IQ-EQ has named Shaun Geils as its global head of insurance.

Geils is stepping into a newly-created position intended to support IQ-EQ’s service offering from the firm’s London office in the United Kingdom.

The financial sector will suffer significant declines if the climate transition does not proceed in an orderly fashion. Abrupt climate risk revaluations will hit banks, asset managers and insurers particularly hard.

Losses in financial markets due to abrupt climate risk revaluations can hit investment funds and insurers hard. It can lead to defaults by companies and cause credit losses for banks. If we fail to ensure an orderly green transition, the risks will spread quickly throughout the financial sector, with companies and banks most at risk.

As we while away the warm – even hot – summer months in the Grand Duchy, it’s on many people’s minds that winter is on its way. And that means we go back to burning gas. While official sources show that Luxembourg doesn’t import much Russian gas, we all pay the going market rate.

Calls for the global alignment of sustainability reporting standards is being complicated by differences of views about which standards to back between those developed by the European Union and a competing private sector standard backed by the well-known IFRS accounting standards organisation.

Global financial services provider Apex Group Ltd announced on Thursday the close of its acquisition of Sanne Group plc, a leading global provider of alternative asset and corporate services.

From 2 August 2022, a European Commission regulation comes into force (Commission Delegated Regulation 2021/1253 of 12 April 2021) as part of MiFiD II that requires providers of investment advisory and discretionary portfolio management services to collect specific information on their clients sustainability preferences. 

The providers are also required to “meet such preferences”, while at the same time meeting their investment objectives and taking into account their financial situation and experience.

The US Federal Reserve announced an expected 75 basis point interest rate hike on Wednesday evening. Inflation pain will now have to be carefully weighed against the threat of an economic recession. Equity markets reacted positively to the announced policy.  

The S&P added 2.68 percent and the Dow Jones gained almost 1.4 percent. European markets extended Wednesday’s gains in early trading. The Euro Stoxx 50 index traded 0.4 percent higher shortly after the opening.