Asset Owner

The failed partnership between Italy’s Generali and France’s BPCE is more than a collapsed deal in European asset management. It exposes how challenging it remains for Europe to build financial scale once a project becomes truly cross-border, and how protectionist reflexes, legal uncertainty and unfinished integration can combine to smother a transaction.

What began as a tool for measuring risks evolved into a normative framework, only to return under political pressure to its core: the G. After 25 years, ESG has come of age, but not without scars.

The first trading day of 2026 left no room for doubt. While many investors were still recovering from the champagne, chip stocks surged worldwide and set new records.

The US government is moving to scale back the influence of proxy advisers ISS and Glass Lewis, casting the firms as ‘foreign-owned political actors’.

Debt is no longer rising quietly in the background of the global economy. For investors, the question is how much additional issuance markets are willing to absorb, and at what price.

Risk parity investors showed renewed optimism in 2025 after several years of underperformance versus the traditional balanced portfolios.

Interest in private banking was high last year among Investment Officer’s Belgian readers. The overview of the ten most read articles of 2025 in Belgium shows that readers were primarily interested in people, organization and the strategic challenges facing the sector.

After a volatile year, the question arises where the best risk-return profile will be found in the coming years. That is why this month’s question to our Market Talk panel, on this occasion with all seven members present, is: what will be your favorite asset class in 2026, and why?

Eight of the fifteen most read Investment Officer Netherlands articles in 2025 focus on developments at, and the ambitions of, the major Dutch private banks: ABN Amro MeesPierson, Rabobank, Van Lanschot Kempen, ING and InsingerGilissen.

Something strange is going on. The US economy is growing, but no jobs are being added. In fact, unemployment is rising to 4.6 percent. Normally, it works like this: first jobs are created, then wages rise, then spending increases. Now that order has been reversed. People are spending money they have not earned.