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.
Private assets: the global 2022 results are in. Finally!
It’s the middle of May and the full-year results are in. For publicly listed companies it would be yesterday’s news. Tax filings have been made and many firms even reported their first quarter. But in private equity, with its long-term perspectives, the ‘old’ data still can be worthy of a cover story, certainly when it comes to a year like 2022, marked by war, inflation and surging interest rates. The Q4 2022 Burgiss report shows how the market did.