EY Luxembourg

This week’s overview of transfers, appointments, promotions and other career news in the fund and asset management community in and around Luxembourg includes updates from Alfi, Marsh McLennan, EY Luxembourg and Amundi.

Banque Havilland, once a discreet player in the European private banking sector, is now caught in a severe regulatory storm. This case has also reignited old tensions related to the 2009 sale of Icelandic bank Kaupthing’s Luxembourg unit to the Rowland family, the financiers behind Banque Havilland.

Given the increasing complexity of financial markets, private banking clients in Luxembourg, especially younger groups, are more willing to seek out financial advice than clients elsewhere in Europe, according to the Luxembourg edition of EY’s Global Wealth Report released on Thursday.

Fund firms face the prospect of EU rules setting standards of “value for money” for their investment products under the Retail Investment Strategy due to be unveiled on 24 May. This could include disincentives, for example, to charging active management fees for an investment that underperforms an index fund. For all the discussion of a ban on inducements for investment advice, the commission has decided to propose a more limited inducement ban on execution-only investments. 

A decision by consultancy EY to split its business into separate entities for audit services and management consultancy has been pushed back to later this year because of the “complexity” of Project Everest, as the plan is internally known.

EY Luxembourg said it remains committed to the ambitious plan.

EY Luxembourg, one of the Big Four accounting and consulting firms, has moved a step closer to splitting its business into separate entities for audit services and for management consultancy. The firm announced on Tuesday that its 65 partners in the grand duchy will decide on the demerger during the first quarter of next year.

Typically, when a private equity fund approaches its contractual culmination point, it will seek to sell its assets, but this may not be possible or desirable at that moment. Establishing a continuation fund is an alternative, Laurent Capolaghi, partner and private equity leader at EY Luxembourg, explained in this Q&A. One third of the top 50 PE houses are considering this alternative option, he estimates.

Aude de Roquancourt has joined EY Luxembourg as a new partner in the accounting compliance and reporting department, the firm said on Thursday.

De Roquancourt previously served as head of fund reporting at EQT Luxembourg and as head of accounting at Societe Generale. She holds a master’s degree in business and management from the EM Lyon Business School, France. She is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt Project Manager and qualified as chartered accountant. 

Romain Swertvaeger has been appointed as head of fintech at EY Luxembourg. He takes over from Gaël Denis, who earlier was appointed as chief operating officer at the firm.

Swertvaeger will lead EY’s fintech practice, which provides services ranging from digital transformation, process management, regulatory compliance and audit, fundraising and valuation support, to tax services and technology risk management. 

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.