Private Banks

Degroof Petercam, Belgium’s largest private bank with a significant presence in Luxembourg, on Wednesday posted a double-digit decline in its full year net profit because of one-time costs related to sale of a majority stake to France’s Credit Agricole group and due to higher tax pressure.

Addressing its business performance, the firm said its private banking business improved due to higher interest rates, while its asset management activities faced a decline in revenues. 

Asset managers still work with a variety of custodian banks, but is this truly necessary? According to experts from the Netherlands, the perfect custodial institution doesn’t exist. Moreover, no one wants to be dependent on a single entity.

Paris-based Oddo BHF Asset Management has announced the launch its first European Long-Term Investment Fund. The fund is called the Oddo BHF Commit for Tomorrow Eltif and will be domiciled in Luxembourg, targeting clients keen to commit to long-term financing companies that provide energy storage and water treatment solutions.

The amended EU proposals for a retail investment strategy have spurred asset managers to reflect on the value the offer for the money that they take, it beame clear at a Luxembourg discussion at the ALFI conference.

Some 40 new Eltif funds, enabling European retail investors to put their money in private markets, are understood to be in the pipeline, due to enter the market in the coming months.

When investors buy a company’s share, conventionally, they hope for the stock value to climb and maybe pay dividends. But there’s another way to make money on your shares – lend them to other investors to use for their own purposes, for a fee. This hasn’t been previously possible for most investors in Luxembourg. With help of a fintech, one bank has committed to make it happen.

With so much media and public attention focussed on large-cap companies like any of the Magnificent Seven, it’s interesting to hear the case for investing in small and mid-cap companies. Those are market valuations, respectively, under 2 billion and between 2 and 10 billion US dollars. Henrik Blohm, who has run the BL American small & mid-caps fund since 2015, is a big proponent.

Uncover the intersection of passion and profit as top-tier banks, including J.P. Morgan, pioneer art financing solutions, offering professional investors an exclusive insight into the evolving landscape of high-value art as a serious asset class.

Services, not fees, are increasingly driving client decisions in wealth management and private banking, a leading US consultancy has concluded in its latest study of clients in the high-net-worth (HNW) and ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) market segments.

Interest in investing in private markets, private credit in particular, may have surged, but that growth is just the beginning. “We see a structural shift towards private credit,” says Joan Solotar, global head of Private Wealth Solutions at Blackstone.