Investment Officer Luxembourg

Although the global economy finds itself in a slowdown phase, it continues to demonstrate resilience thanks to domestic consumption in the US and government relief measures to reduce energy bills in Europe, Guy Wagner, Chief Investment Officer at Luxembourg asset manager BLI - Banque de Luxembourg Investments, said in his latest investment report. Over the next year however, he expects the global slowdown to deepen.

No, this is not a column about the Netherlands’ performance at the World Cup. Although, of course, the title fits this seamlessly. This column is about China and its Covid issues.

A total of 43 new Reserved Alternative Investment Funds, or Raifs, were registered in Luxembourg during November, indicating that the market for these alternative investments is not slowing down after all, according to data released by Luxembourg Business Register.

Luxembourg’s financial supervisor CSSF has made clear that it expects investment funds that commit to sustainability objectives will stick to these commitments. If a fund defines thresholds for specific ESG or sustainability investments, then it should consider these as a “binding commitments”.

Referring to a regulatory environment that is “still evolving”, Amundi, Europe’s largest asset management company, said it has taken a “conservative” step and reclassified almost all of its most sustainable investment funds, worth around 45 billion euro, to Article 8 from Article 9 under the EU’s sustainable finance disclosure regulation.

This week’s Top 5 by Morningstar looks at the performance of funds that invest in Chinese A-shares in the year to date. A-shares are shares of mainland China-based companies that trade on the two Chinese stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen. Since 2003, select foreign institutions have been able to purchase these shares through the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor programme.