‘Institutional portfolios can do with more venture capital’
Institutional investment portfolios in Europe could do with more venture capital, especially when it comes to making green impact investments, the Netherlands’ technology investment envoy Constantijn van Oranje-Nassau said in an IO Talks podcast interview. Van Oranje, who leads Amsterdam-based Techleap, a Dutch government sponsored tech investment initiative, spoke about the global business climate for technology investments, the effects of rising interest rates on tech investments, dilemmas around artificial intelligence, and the new Nato Investment Fund, which is being structured via Luxembourg.
Anti-ESG policy seen as reason to underweight the US
While those European investors still in doubt about the importance of ESG are becoming increasingly bogged down in a rearguard action, U.S. states are increasingly passing anti-ESG laws. “If this becomes federal policy, I would underweight the U.S. in the portfolio,” said Gaya Herrington, a sustainability researcher and advisor to the Club of Rome.
Chart of the Week: Fund manager yet to unwind risk
The latest edition of the Bank of America Global Fund Manager Survey shows that fund managers are still overweight equities while their expectations of future economic growth have come down considerably.
Indeed, the chart below shows that fund managers have never been so pessimistic about growth. Not during Covid and not during the Great Financial Crisis. The ‘mismatch’ between expectations and positioning is extreme.
SFDR level 2 finetuning: more details and lots of extra work
Technical standards with which sustainability information must comply are becoming clearer as far as the European supervisory authorities are concerned. They published a comprehensive consultation paper with a high level of detail and many calculation formulae on the level 2 implementation of the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Directive, or SFDR. The industry can propose amendments up to 4 July.
PGIM Investments: Resilient Global Real Estate Opportunities
In its Q2 2023 Outlook, PGIM Real Estate explains why resilient REITs with attractive valuations could present compelling opportunities to help investors weather a potential economic slowdown.
AXA IM: Webinar - Tackling biodiversity loss: How can investors make an impact?
Join the AXA IM global webinar, on the International Day for Biological Diversity, and discover how investors can tackle biodiversity loss and make impact.
‘Value for money’ replaces full kickback ban in EU retail plan
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.
Esma wants EU law to stop ‘undue costs’ in funds
Europe’s top regulator for securities and financial markets on Wednesday said it believes there is a need for EU-level legislation to make sure investors do not bear costs that are considered excessive, unnecessary, or unreasonable when they put their money in investment funds.
Why is gold so expensive?
In Uncommon Truths, Invesco experts Paul Jackson and Andras Vig’s provide a regular in-depth look at the big topics impacting markets.
Attracting talent is getting harder!
In 1908, there were 16,000 Luxembourgish immigrants living in Chicago. They were extremely poor and needed to emigrate to survive. Today, people emigrate to Luxembourg for different reasons. It’s more about thriving rather than surviving.
Without immigration, there would be no fund industry, there is a constant need to attract talent from abroad. Amazingly, only 20% of the local population works in the private sector. Probably even less in the fund industry.