Investment Officer

Companies with above average sustainability profile held up better during the first month of the corona crisis. The crisis thus confirms the importance of ESG integration not only from a climatic and social perspective, but also from a financial perspective.

A quarter of the 600 largest listed companies in Europe have already suspended or cancelled dividend payments for this year, according to a study by Germany’s DZ Bank. As a consequence, total dividend payouts are to fall by some €310 billion.

The bank’s analysts write that ‘an unprecedented cancellation of dividend payments is rolling over European stock markets’. They estimate 2019 payouts to fall by 23%, or €310 billion. 

A record of €246 billion flowed out of investment funds last month, surpassing redemptions seen even during the darkest months of the great financial crisis. Commodity funds were the only ones to weather the negative trend, thanks to high demand for gold.

Welcome to investmentofficer.lu, a brand new publication dedicated to Luxembourg’s fund industry. With the launch of investmentofficer.lu, our platform is now active in all three Benelux countries. 

We started in August 2008 in the Netherlands with fondsnieuws.nl, now the country’s biggest platform for investment professionals. We expanded to Belgium in 2018 with the bilingual platform investmentofficer.be, which up until now has registered users representing more than 500 companies.

Investment data and research provider Morningstar is acquiring full ownership of Sustainalytics, the ESG ratings agency. Morningstar already owned a 40%-stake in the company.

European regulators are trying to prevent a liquidity crisis caused by excessive outflows from investment funds in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. The CSSF has joined other European regulators in asking asset managers for large amounts of information about their ability to repay investors.

French and German financial regulators are asking for daily updates on outflows from open-ended funds, while stock market watchdogs in Luxembourg and Ireland have also stepped up their oversight, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

The CSSF is facilitating the defrauding of investors by failing to timely enforce regulation on funds, says David Mapley, director of the LFP 1 Equity Power Fund.

The Federal Reserve is by far the largest single owner of US government bonds. If the Fed continues its buy-back policy at its current pace, all US government debt will be in the hands of the central bank in less than two years’ time. That’s a good reason to sell Treasuries, says BlackRock.

A study of bear markets shows that in 70 percent of the cases stock markets fell back to a new low. In 30 percent there was a continuing recovery after a severe crash. We are probably experiencing the latter scenario now, according to BNP Paribas Fortis’ chief strategist Philippe Gijsels.

Gijsels says that the bank has been busy buying attractively priced shares and high yield bonds for clients for some time now. 

A Netflix-like environment that provides access to advice that is data-driven, personalized, continuous and preferrably subscription-based, is the future of wealth advice according to McKinsey.