Raymond Frenken

One month after the EU ordered the investment sector to ask clients for their sustainability preferences, investment firms appear to show limited enthusiasm for complying with the new requirements as complexity around the EU’s ESG rules persists and greenwashing fears linger.

Finland’s Mandatum Asset Management and fund services platform Universal Investment on Monday said they have launched a new open-ended Senior Secured Loan Fund for professional investors in Europe that will finance leveraged buyouts in Scandinavia and Europe. The fund is structured as a Luxembourg Raif and targets approximately one billion euro on the long term.

European investment funds in real estate and alternative assets are vulnerable and could face liquidity risks in the event of a sudden investor sell-off, according to a senior official at Europe’s main financial markets supervisor, the European Securities and Markets Authority, or Esma. “It is one of the tricky issues here,” he said.

BLI - Banque de Luxembourg Investments on Thursday said that it has appointed Fanny Nosetti (photo) as chief executive officer. The appointment means that Guy Wagner now can “focus entirely” on his role  as chief investment officer, managing the firm’s flagship, 1.8 billion euro BL Global Flexible Euro fund and continuing to refine the investment approach he has developed with his teams. Since 2005 Wagner served both as CEO and CIO.

Growth in funds registered as Reserved Alternative Investment Funds, known as Raifs, in Luxembourg has increased considerably in the first half of this year , according to an analysis of data from the Luxembourg Business Registry by Investment Officer Luxembourg.

Luxempart, a Luxembourg-listed investment and private equity company, has posted a consolidated net loss of 55.4 million euro for the first half as its investment income was hit by “extremely choppy” conditions in financial markets and the economy.

The loss compares to a profit of 499 million euros in the same period a year earlier. The firm said it maintained its net assets at 2.078 billion euros by the end of June, down slightly from from 2.169 billion a year earlier.

The European Central Bank needs to review its special programmes that make available cheap money to banks in Europe in order to become more effective in fighting inflation, Banque de France governor François Villeroy de Galhau told central bankers at their meeting in Jackson Hole.

Central banks worldwide will need to face the fact that pressure on prices will remain high for the coming years and that inflation dynamics will continue to be clouded by uncertainty, Switzerland’s central bank chief has told his colleagues in Jackson Hole. The Swiss central bank also prides itself in working with a narrow mandate that is not influenced by political considerations.

A recent study conducted by Boston-based State Street has found evidence of “green shorting”,  a phenomenon in financial markets where investors borrow shares of companies with a weak sustainability profile and sell them in the hope they can buy them back cheaper when the price declines.

With a recession looming in Europe, investors again are on the lookout for suitable safe havens. Ethenea’s investment strategist Andrea Siviero, who manages the firm’s 60-million-euro Hesper Fund - Global Solutions together with Federico Frischknecht, believes the Swiss franc and the Japanese yen are well placed to take up this role, as the Fund has1a position in December 2023 Euribor futures that anticipates the ECB won’t be able to raise rates next year as much as currently discounted by the market.