Laws and Regulations

It’s been nearly a decade since the European Commission set out its ambitious plans for a Capital Markets Union (CMU), diversifying sources of funding in Europe’s economy. Progress so far has been slow and Brussels now has conceded it needs help to persuade member states and its citizens of its merits before it can make another push

As the financial industry continues to call for more clarity and guidance to handle what even supervisors see as the “astonishing” complexity of the emerging EU framework for sustainable finance, impact investments and ESG, European regulators have added a range of technical details to sustainability rules over recent weeks. 

Luxembourg has frozen some 4.3 billion euro in Russian assets, mostly held in shares, bonds and bank accounts, as part of the international sanctions against Russia, the finance ministry said.

The Luxembourg Business Register, at the request of the finance ministry, so far has identified more than 90 persons and 1,100 legal entities registered in the Trade and Companies Register (RCS) for which there are details of persons included in the sanctions lists. 

European central bank policy makers will meet in Amsterdam on Thursday at the invitation of Klaas Knot, the Dutch central bank governor who is known for his hawkish approach to interest rates and his support of a 50 basis point rate hike in July. And: when will the ECB start discussing Quantitative Tightening, like the Fed?

Luxembourg Finance Minister Yuriko Backes is visiting London this week, at a time when advocates of maintaining strong UK-EU financial services relationships are struggling to have their voices heard. The Luxembourg government has sought to take the heat out of Brexit arguments since the 2016 leave vote, and this visit is the latest such effort. 

Frankfurt investigators on Tuesday raided Deutsche Bank and the nearby offices of asset management arm DWS. The suspicion is that DWS is guilty of so-called “greenwashing”. It is alleged that the asset manager systematically exaggerated the sustainable nature of its products. 

Fund administrators active in Luxembourg will be required to produce an annual report on their governance and internal organisation from next year onwards as part of a long-awaited effort by financial supervisor CSSF to modernise a 30-year old supervisory framework in this field.

After two rounds of voting three candidates remained in the race on Monday night for the position of director-general of the European Stability Mechanism. Luxembourg’s candidate Pierre Gramegna, a former finance minister, will have to win the support from southern European countries if he is to succeed Klaus Regling in October. A decision now is expected at the 16 June Eurogroup meeting in the Grand Duchy.

The collapse in the value of two cryptocurrencies linked to South Korea’s Terra blockchain has sent the crypto world aflutter. The resultant crash wiped out over USD 15 billion in cryptocurrency value, raising questions about the level of stability offered by “stablecoins” and attracting the attention of politicians and regulators worldwide. Jake Lee, chief strategy officer of Gopax, a South Korean cryptocurrency exchange, who knows the players involved,  shared his insights at the recent Finverse Forum conference in Luxembourg. 

Luxembourg, Italy, Portugal and the Netherlands have all put forward candidates to succeed Klaus Regling as the head of the European Stability Mechanism, the 500-billion-euro eurozone bailout fund known as ESM. On Monday, the Eurozone finance ministers are due to decide on a successor for Regling, who steps down after a ten-year tenure and leaves behind a legacy at the Luxembourg-based ESM.