Products

For Zurich-based Serpentine Ventures, a venture asset manager, Luxembourg is a key gateway to reaching international investors. The firm is leveraging the grand duchy’s regime for alternative investment funds for four of its venture capital funds that nurture Swiss startups.

The idea that sustainable funds will be more expensive than conventional funds due to the extra cost of sustainability research is not necessarily true. Both active and passive funds turn out to be cheaper. Sustainable funds are classified under European regulations into Article 8 and Article 9 funds. Within the latter category, we rank the cheapest options within global large-cap equity funds.

Eurozone value stocks are performing this year in a way not seen since 2016. Over the first eight months of the year, they actually achieved better returns than the broad market. Yet investors in funds that invest in such equities will have few reasons to celebrate.

Factor investing, an investment approach that involves targeting specific drivers of return across asset classes, is attracting increasing interest from investors. Factors such as value, size and momentum have a long history in the investment world and have been extensively empirically researched and documented in the academic literature. Although there are different variations for these factors as well, the factor quality is perhaps the most debated, both in academia and in practice.

You may not have noticed it while on holiday this summer, but Italy is once again in crisis. Political risks make for an uncertain economic outlook. This week, we look at the top 5 bond funds with the highest exposure to the battered Italy debt markets.

Global asset manager Invesco has launched an actively managed, 30 million dollar investment fund focused on metaverse companies. The Invesco Metaverse Fund will be domiciled in Luxembourg and will be distributed to investors across Europe.

The metaverse is defined as a virtual-reality space in which users can interact with a computer-generated environment and other users. Virtual and augmented reality has the potential to add some 1.7 billion euro to the world economy and approximately 23 million jobs by 2030, according to consultancy PwC.

Boris Radondy, manager of the DNCA Global Sport Equity fund, expects strong growth in the sports sector over the next few years and believes it can present predictable long-term growth.

DNCA Finance’s integration of Ostrum Asset Management in October 2020 added a team of 21 people and 7 billion euro in assets under management, mainly in equity and convertible bond management. 

The risk of recession and persistent inflation resulted in a correction of almost all risky assets. Also high yield bonds ended the first half of the year with heavy losses. An update:

Interest rate hikes in developed markets caused most bond categories to be deeply in the red after the second quarter of this year. High-yield bonds were not spared: The ICE BofA Glb High Yield Constrained Index closed the second quarter of 2022 with a loss of 5.7 percent measured in euros after giving up 4 percent in the first quarter.

More lenient EU regulations are about to make it possible for providers to offer private investment funds to private investors. Private products such as semi-liquid funds and European Long Term Investment Funds, or Eltifs - which can be marketed also to retail clients under a European passport, often via Luxembourg - will gradually change the private equity landscape. “The split that the market currently finds itself in will then be resolved,” said Wim Nagler, head of institutional clients at Schroders.

With a first-half loss of 7 percent when measured in euro, the GBI-EM Global Diversified Index, the benchmark for emerging market bonds, was by no means the worst student in its class.

The past six months have been one of the toughest for bonds ever. Especially long-dated bonds have taken a beating. The Bloomberg Euro Aggregate 10+ Year index fell by no less than 23.6 percent while the Bloomberg Euro Aggregate 1-3 Year index was “only” 2.9 percent lower.