Investment Officer Luxembourg

IntReal Luxembourg SA, a subsidiary of property-focused third-party AIF manager IntReal, has added Stephan Schilken, 48, to its management team as a managing director. He will serve in the position of conducting officer and brings to the job decades of experience in Luxembourg’s investment fund and financial sector.

The market for European long term investment funds, or Eltifs, is set to triple in the coming years as high-net-worth clients increasingly look to diversify their portfolios by increasing their exposure to private markets, according to US fund manager BlackRock. “We have, I would say, aggressive plans to expand.”

Banks across Europe and elsewhere in the world should brace themselves for having their climate policies challenged in court after French bank BNP Paribas last week became the first commercial bank to find itself confronted with a lawsuit because of its support to fossil fuels and for contributing to climate change.

Luxembourg’s leading financial sector associations, together with the supervisory authorities and the government, are about to launch a public campaign that seeks to elucidate the general public in the grand duchy on sustainable finance. 

In particular, the campaign aims to make clear that sustainable investing is more than just environmental ‘green finance’ and that ESG investing also relates to social issues and the governance of companies.

The world’s top body to fight money laundering and financial crime on Monday warned that the international high value art and antiquities market has become vulnerable to money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The Financial Action Task Force called on art dealers and governments to up their efforts to fight illicit funding in these markets.

Financial services group Apex Group Ltd on Monday announced it has launched a new ESG database and benchmarking platform for private markets. 

Apex’s ESG data service is run as a ‘Data as a Service’, or DaaS, platform and draws on information from more than 400 GPs, 1,500 portfolio companies in more than 45 countries since 2019. It includes proprietary and verified data that can be used for benchmarking.

Even after 40 percent of the EU’s most sustainable fund assets was downgraded during the fourth quarter, managers of investment funds with an outspoken sustainability profile are still not sure whether their funds meet the requirements for ESG investments under the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation.

Further downgrades are expected during the coming months.

Marion Le Morhedec is global head of fixed income at AXA Investment Management. For this edition of IO’s Portfolio Update podcast she spoke with Investment Officer’s Max Severijns.