state street

Even Ciaran Fitzpatrick, head of ETF servicing Europe at State Street, is surprised to see phenomenally strong growth in true active ETFs this year. The latest generation of ETF products, also dubbed ‘ETF 3.0’, is rapidly making its way into portfolios of both institutional and retail investors. The US is leading but Europe is not far behind.

Ciaran Fitzpatrick of State Street Institutional Services paints a vibrant picture of the evolving landscape for Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs). Across the investment world, the move from active to passive is not just a trend but a shift that is being felt across retail and institutional investments, largely due to persistent pressure on costs. Ireland and Luxembourg present different appeals to new issuers.

This Luxembourg edition of IO Talks hears about the latest developments in the realm of blockchain technology in the asset management and investment industry. 

The first day of the 2023 ALFI European Asset Management Conference heard from the head of the European Securities and Markets Authority, Verena Ross, and included panels on the impact of blockchain and digital assets, as well as corporate taxation.

Private markets, in particular those for digital infrastructure investments, continue to appeal to European institutional investors, according to a global survey among 480 institutional investors presented on Tuesday by State Street. The survey also shows that European investors are a bit more reluctant than others to invest in private equity.

The third quarter has come to a close.  In the category of global large-cap mixed equity, Gavekal, JOHCM and State Street offered the best-performing funds during these three months, as measured by the performance of funds with a classification for the Netherlands in this week’s Morningstar Top 5. 

Unregulated investment funds in Luxembourg, in particular Reserved Alternative Investment Funds known Raifs, showed the biggest increase the Grand Duchy’s fund industry last year. According to the latest Monterey Insight report, the value of these funds increased 71.4 percent last year to some 330.8 billion euro.

Other unregulated funds, such as LuxLPs and Soparfi’s, reached a value of 470 billion at the end of 2021. That is an increase of 61.5 percent in assets.

Financial regulators across Europe are keeping a close eye on their Luxembourg counterpart CSSF, which is reviewing its rules that tell investment firms how to handle errors in calculations of Net Asset Values, or NAVs. “I think that we may consider the CSSF approach as a best practice.”

Investor confidence in Europe jumped in August and reached its highest level since January last year, according to the latest State Street Investor Confidence Index.

The investor confidence index, or ICI, for Europe jumped 20.4 points to 106 in August. Investor confidence in North America also increased, although merely 2.1 points to 106.5. The global investor confidence index rose to 107.3 in August, up from 102.2 in July.

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.