Private Banks

More than two thirds of fund selectors see active fund management as key to outperforming in the current year, a reflection of its growing importance in uncertain markets, the latest Natixis 2024 Fund Selector Outlook Survey shows.

The survey uncovered a strategic pivot among wealth managers, who over the past decade have largely favoured passively managed index funds. However, 45% of fund selectors attribute the outperformance of passive investments to a decade of artificially low interest rates and minimal inflation, conditions that are changing. 

Those who make money in Luxembourg’s real estate sector are still in shock after the arrival in this country of the long-ago predicted 2023 global real estate correction.

Investment specialists are singing from a common hymn book in predicting the world is on a path to lower inflation and treasury yields, though they carefully call attention to possible transitional effects, Investment Officer heard while covering two recent investment events in Luxembourg hosted by J. Safra Sarasin and Capital Group.

In an uncertain geopolitical and macroeconomic environment, Iris van de Looij has recently taken charge of investment teams at InsingerGilissen, Quintet’s private bank in the Netherlands. The bank is currently in a slightly defensive mode, but sees scope to add some more risk to its portfolio again. 

Christine Lynch has been appointed as Group Chief Risk Officer at Luxembourg-headquartered Quintet Private Bank. She joins from HSBC, where she served for over 25 years, most recently as chief risk officer wholesale and as head of enterprise risk.

Lynch will also be a member of Quintet’s Authorized Management Committee, subject to regulatory approval. She succeeds Philip Tremble, who retired last year following more than four decades in banking.

While many asset managers continue to explore private investments amidst growing market uncertainties, Optimix Asset Management has consistently avoided them. “Investors don’t need private markets,”  said Jelte de Boer, managing director of Amsterdam-based Optimix, a Dutch subsidiary of Swedish bank Handelsbanken.

Private banks will have to get serious about outsourcing if they want to prosper once interest rates come down, says Pascal Martino, partner at Deloitte and co-author of a new report on tech leadership in private banking.

The European Commission has cleared the acquisition of Belgium’s largest private bank Degroof Petercam by CA Indosuez, a subsidiary of the Paris-based Crédit Agricole group.

The Commission said on Monday that it concluded that the proposed concentration does not raise competition concerns given the limited market positions of the companies involved.

With the official launch of Eltifs 2.0 in early 2024, the private semi-liquid private funds market is undergoing a revival, both in terms of products and assets under management.

Belgian investor Frank Vlayen has taken a 47.5 percent stake in Antwerp-based Leo Stevens Private Banking. CEO Ive Mertens believes this deal will solidify the stockbroking firm’s independent trajectory.