Investment Officer Belgium

A sweeping new EU regulation for ESG rating providers is set to reshape a market that Morningstar Sustainalytics has helped build, consolidating a fragmented industry and raising the compliance bar significantly.

Now that the US SEC has placed most digital assets, including cryptocurrencies, outside its oversight, chair Paul Atkins said the “brake on innovation” that the market watchdog had become under Gary Gensler is disappearing.

For years, Luxembourg has been where funds are domiciled, administered, and reported on, while the actual investment decisions got made elsewhere. That may be shifting. Luxembourg is moving, slowly but surely, from being a back-office location to one with front-office roles.

If there is one thing that characterizes the investment world, it is that it is full of clichés, parrots, and an enormous reluctance to change. It is sometimes laughable how market experts produce the same one-liners for twenty years or bury you under their “market wisdom.”

Blackrock is an established behemoth with total assets that easily overwhelm its closest rivals, while UBS Asset Management is rebuilding following the acquisition of Credit Suisse Asset Management.

Faithful readers of this column know that I am deeply concerned about the politicization of the European Central Bank (ECB). Lessons from monetary history and piles of academic research support that concern: we simply know that a central bank that listens to what politicians want is bad news for inflation in the medium term.

An Irish long-term investment fund has suspended redemptions after investor withdrawals exceeded its limits, marking the first gating event in the European market and exposing the structural tension at the heart of the product.

For decades, investors have been told to balance risk with a simple formula: the 60/40 split between stocks and bonds. New research from Yale argues that approach is fundamentally flawed, leaving many savers too conservatively positioned to maximise long-term wealth.

The health care sector continues to lag behind the broader equity market, but according to sector analysts, investor pessimism is overdone. Innovation, improving earnings growth, and declining political risks could give the sector renewed momentum in the coming years.

European investors are approaching the current crisis using analytical frameworks from previous crises. According to chief strategist Mabrouk Cherouane of Natixis Investment Managers, this reflex leads to misinterpretations that directly affect asset allocation.