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Belgian ETFs grapple with tax inconsistencies

Belgium’s Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs) market finds itself navigating through a tax system inconsistency that favours unregistered products, according to Sébastien Lippens, the founding partner at Privafin. In a market where ETFs are highly sought after for their simplicity and cost-effectiveness, Belgian investors are urged to tread carefully due to the complexity of the country’s tax rules for investment products.

‘Outperformance of US equities difficult to maintain’

Experts from Schroders, Robeco, and Franklin Templeton advise maintaining a cautious stance on the valuation of US equities, highlighting that key interest rates are likely to decrease more slowly than market expectations.

Annually, Schroders, Franklin Templeton, and Robeco host their Investment Forum in Brussels. At this event, specialists from these three asset management firms shared their projections for the newly commenced financial year and offered insights on strategic portfolio positioning.

‘We look for stable businesses’

Claus Vorm, senior portfolio manager and deputy head of multi assets at Nordea Asset Management, underlines the importance of choosing companies with predictable and stable prospects over time, which deliver superior and less volatile performance. Without investing in energy, his 100 per cent equity fund managed to achieve a near break-even result in 2022. 

iShares: bond ETF market can grow to $5,000 billion

Index products have seen significant inflows at the expense of active products, reflecting increasing interest from both institutional and retail investors. The outlook for Europe remains positive in the coming years. Bond ETFs in particular still have strong growth ahead of them.

Last year was a tough one for financial markets, and the ETF segment was not left behind as assets under management - at the global level - fell for the first time since 2011. 

With Caceis, Amundi’s Fund Channel aims to boost growth

Amundi Group’s distribution platform Fund Channel has taken Caceis on board as a shareholder and now to plans to accelerate its growth in distribution in order to deliver on its ambition of nearly doubling its assets under intermediation by the end of 2025.  

Amundi is Europe’s  largest asset manager with some 1.86 trillion euro in assets under management. Since 2005, the firm has offered an open-architecture fund distribution platform called Fund Channel, designed as B2B platform for financial intermediaries.