Esma faces uphill battle to emerge as European SEC
In an interview with Investment Officer, Esma chair Verena Ross outlined her vision and the significant challenges ahead as the regulatory body aims to become Europe’s equivalent to the US SEC.
Washington is rewinding the clock on investor protection
Washington is rewinding the clock on investor protection. Under chair Paul Atkins, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has rolled back a series of rules, scaled back enforcement and curtailed shareholder rights. According to former senior counsel Benjamin Schiffrin, who spent nearly two decades at the agency, the regulator is now siding more with Wall Street than with investors.
Morningstar: Blackrock vs Pimco in global diversified bond strategies
Over the 12 months to February 2026, the US dollar weakened by 12.6 percent against the euro, a move mirrored across several emerging-markets currencies, including the Brazilian real, South African rand, Mexican peso and Malaysian ringgit. This currency shift has pushed managers in the Morningstar Global Bond – Diversified category toward local-currency emerging-markets debt to capture both rate differentials and currency appreciation.
The biggest threat to the euro is the ECB
On the eve of the recent meeting of EU leaders on how to make the European economy more innovative, more competitive, and less dependent on foreign countries, participants were sent a note from the European Central Bank (ECB). In it, the bank outlined what it considers desirable policy to achieve those goals.
To navigate private assets, wealthy families are investing together
As real estate returns to favor as an asset class, sourcing investment opportunities is not necessarily the biggest challenge that wealthy families face. The real hurdle is conducting thorough due diligence—but this can be tackled by joining forces with other family offices.
Software selloff drives repricing in Europe’s loan markets
Artificial intelligence has unsettled software stocks for months. Now it is testing European credit markets and exposing fault lines in parts of private credit that were sold to investors as stable and uncorrelated. “If the software issue remains isolated, markets can cope. If it bleeds into the real economy, then all bets are off.”
Transfers: Utmost, JP Morgan, Jupiter, Bain, HQ Trust, Colliers
Utmost, a provider of insurance-based wealth solutions, has appointed Nicoletta Basso as branch manager of its Luxembourg branch. She previously served for more than 6 years at Utmost as tax and legal counsel for Italy, advising high net worth clients and business partners alongside the sales team.
Clarity around ‘Sanaenomics’ makes Japan investable again
Prime Minister Takaichi’s clear reflation policy is making Japan attractive to investors once more, even though the policy rate, at 0.75 percent, stands at its highest level in thirty years. The panic surrounding the unwinding of the yen carry trade, which caused global turmoil two years ago, now appears to have definitively faded into the background.
Xtrackers push DWS assets under management above 1,000 billion euro
The Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) of DWS are making a significant contribution to the growth of the German asset manager. The assets under management of the firm, in which Deutsche Bank holds an 80 percent stake, increased in 2025 by 73 billion euro to the record sum of 1,085 billion euro. Two thirds of the inflow of 51 billion euro was driven by demand for the in-house Xtrackers ETFs.
The great rotation
The S&P500 is virtually unchanged this year, but beneath the surface the US equity market is moving more than it has in years. More than one fifth of all stocks in the index have already risen or fallen by more than 20 percent this year. The gainers are clearly in the majority: about two out of three. Yet you do not see that reflected in the index itself. How is that possible?