EY

This week’s overview of transfers, appointments, promotions and other career news includes updates from PwC Luxembourg, EY Luxembourg, the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the European Stability Mechanism. DLA Piper, CMS. Fundcraft and CAIA Luxembourg

Under the guidance of the European accounting directive, Luxembourg is overhauling its accounting laws in a major way. The effort aims to modernize and align with current market practices, reflecting Luxembourg’s business profile. The changes also include additional requirements for SCSp partnership vehicles, commonly used for funds, and firms with over 500 million euros on their balance sheets. It’s a daring move toward increased transparency and compliance, showing Luxembourg’s determination to maintain its status as a leading financial center.

Luxembourg topped the list for the most direct foreign investment per capita for the second year running in EY’s Luxembourg Attractiveness Survey. But the clear sense at a press conference held to release the second edition of the survey was that the country has to work hard to keep itself in this favourable position, increasing its attractiveness, defending its financial industry against EU anti-tax avoidance directives, as well as figuring out the issue of the talent gap.

If there’s one thing clear from recent months, it’s that Luxembourg is placing a major bet on the future of Eltifs, or European Long Term Investment Funds. The EU’s adoption of a major upgrade of the Eltif regulation is opening the doors to private markets for high-net-worth investors and wealth management clients.

One might have thought Luxembourg’s real estate market was doing well compared to other European cities, but for a long time, exact comparative numbers weren’t available. That’s all changed with the release of a new property index covering Luxembourg, the result of an 18-month long labour-intensive and expensive project.

EY Luxembourg on Friday said it has named Fernando Longares as its new leader for the Telecommunications, Media and Technology (TMT) sector, Longares will succeed Gaël Denis, who will become chief operating officer at the firm. 

In Luxembourg’s financial sector, ‘the new Ucits’ is an informal but widely recognised label that stands for innovation and promising change. It refers to the success of its 1980s investment legislation that offered European passports to Ucits investments funds, sparking a multi-decade boom in the financial sector, turning Luxembourg into Europe’s leading hub for investment funds and replacing the steel industry as the country’s main economic driver.

Luxembourg’s post-Brexit boom in financial sector relocations and foreign direct investment is over, according to an EY study on the Grand Duchy’s attractiveness that was released on Tuesday.

In the Luxembourg transfer market, Banque de Luxembourg Investments and JP Morgan Asset Management both announced that they have strengthened their sustainable investing teams. Consultancy EY meanwhile said it has created a new Luxembourg team dedicated to the public sector.

Roland Rott and Soňa Stadtelmeyer-Petru (pictured) have joined JP Morgan’s sustainable investing team. Both hires will report to JPM’s Global Head of Sustainable Investing, Jennifer Wu.

Unshell – the name given to the third anti tax-avoidance directive (ATAD III) – would have a “huge impact for Luxembourg, especially for Luxembourg” said Carlo Fassbinder, tax director at the Luxembourg finance ministry.