Investment Officer Belgium

At the World Pensions Conference in London, experts pointed to Australia and Canada as models Europe can no longer ignore when it comes to investing in private markets.

De ECB heeft stablecoins een plekje gegeven in haar Financial Stability Review. Nu mag je in een stuk met daarin de term stabiliteitsbeoordeling verwachten dat het vooral over risico’s gaat, maar dan nog blijft de insteek van de ECB opvallend. Het ongegeneerd willen voortrekken van de traditionele bankensector is meer dan veelzeggend.

For decades, we have embraced the rise of passive investing (hammock investing) as the ultimate democratization of the financial markets. The gospel of low costs, broad diversification, and market returns seemed infallible. But while passive assets under management have climbed to astronomical levels, a wave of critical academic research reveals a troubling paradox: the instrument designed to help investors may be structurally distorting the market and ultimately diminishing their wealth.

It was a master plan. The Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation was supposed to send massive private capital flows into green investments, finance the Green Deal, and allow Europe to set an example for the rest of the world. Not a nonbinding directive, but an ambitious framework meant to discipline the financial sector and crush greenwashing.

AI is going to change the world, but which companies will benefit most from that trend? Investors who put money into trends and themes such as AI look for a solid benchmark to determine the purity of their investments. The goal is high purity. That does not always work out.

Financial markets are under pressure. Not only stocks but also other asset classes are mostly moving lower. Are we dealing with unique factors, or is there a single overarching culprit?

Dan Ariely has devoted his career to understanding irrational behavior. According to the Duke University professor of psychology and behavioral economics, ESG investors are the perfect test group. They focus, he says, on what is easy to measure rather than on what actually matters for returns.

One in five global dividend funds now integrates ESG criteria. Where sustainable funds in other segments have struggled to maintain their growth momentum, sustainable global dividend funds have seen strong inflows in recent years.

It was in May 2018 that the European Commission launched its highly ambitious European Sustainable Finance package. Seven years later, the political winds in Europe have shifted significantly, and sustainability ambitions are being scaled back step by step.