Raymond Frenken

The EU’s top financial markets authority on Thursday invited the European Commission to clarify new sustainability reporting requirements for European companies and to make its legislation for non-financial reporting standards more consistent with other pieces of EU legislation.

Boards of AIFMs, Alternative Investment Fund Managers, in Luxembourg are “heavily concerned” over potential greenwashing, a survey conducted by PWC Luxembourg on behalf of the Luxembourg corporate governance institute ILA said. 

Luxembourg’s fund industry has high hopes for Eltif 2.0, the revised European regime for long-term investment funds that is set to be approved next month by the European Parliament. Thanks to the updated rules, products like private funds can be targeted directly at retail investors in all 30 countries in the European Economic Area with one single AIFM passport.

When it comes to EU financial regulation it won’t surprise anyone to hear that more is in store for the year ahead. Investment Officer looks ahead together with Vincent Ingham, director of regulatory policy at the European Fund and Asset Management Association in Brussels.

Dublin-based international management company Waystone, a major actor also in the Luxembourg market, has added fund administration to its range of offerings now that its acquisition of Centaur Financial Services, also Dublin-based, has obtained regulatory approval and been completed.

Global financial services provider Apex Group is taking over Alfi Partners, a Luxembourg-based third-party fund marketing specialist, the firm announced today. Alfi Partners will become part of Apex FundRock, the largest third-party manager of investment funds in Luxembourg. Financial details were not disclosed.

“The UBS phase is over,” a Quintet banker told me last week.

With economic growth slowing down in all three of the world’s major economies, investors are best advised to opt for the geographical region with the least messy outlook, leading international economist Mohammed El-Erian has told a Nordic conference. “The cleanest dirty shirt is in the US.”

Luxembourg-based global private bank Quintet has reshuffled the top leadership of its branches in Luxembourg and Germany following a series of departures of senior executives at the end of last year that included CEO Europe Thomas Rodermann. Rodermann, one of the former UBS executives that had joined the bank in recent years, was seen as the architect of the integration of the private bank’s German, Dutch and Belgian businesses into a single business unit. A successor will not be appointed, Quintet said.

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In the Luxembourg market for Reserved Alternative Investment Funds, Dublin-headquartered investment services firm Waystone has emerged as the biggest issuer by a landslide, analysis of 2022 data by Investment Officer Luxembourg shows. The list of most active Raif issuers also includes Carne Global - the number one issuer in previous years, One Funds and Hauck Aufhäuser Lampe.

The analysis showed that Luxembourg was home to a total of about 2125 Raifs at the end of last year after adding some 472 new funds during 2022.