Investment Officer Luxembourg

Oddo BHF Asset Management said it has strengthened its presence in Benelux with the recruitment of André Koeken as sales manager. He is now in charge of developing the clientele of independent financial advisors and insurance companies in the Benelux. He reports to Dominic Nys, sales manager for Benelux.

Apex Group Ltd continues to add management companies to its group through acquisitions. On Wednesday it said it plans to acquire the fund services and third-party management company business operations of Maitland International Holdings plc, an international fund services provider with a presence in Luxembourg, for an undisclosed amount. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval.

Product launches for Article 8 and 9 funds, sustainability funds and ESG funds are all over the place, but there is no insight into which fund houses are actually putting a lot of assets to work sustainably. Enquiries with Morningstar show that it is certainly not (only) the usual names that have the most assets in sustainable funds.

A university-sponsored wealthtech startup based in Liège, Belgium, is keen to make life easier for European fund managers that currently face sleepless nights. In 77 days, in the middle of the summer holidays, additional client suitability requirements will enter into force in the EU. It can change the way wealth managers interact with their clients.

Private markets are no longer the exclusive preserve of large institutional investors. A round of questions to Dutch asset managers point to an influx of families and high-net-worth individuals - or HNWIs - as private equity becomes more widely available as an asset class. Their increased appetite for alternative investments is also noted in Luxembourg.

For years, US technology stocks have beaten the rest of the market. And not by much. This trend was reinforced by the Covid crisis, which pushed the valuation of growth stocks to unprecedented heights - even higher than during the ‘dot.com’ bubble. 

This sky-high valuation was sustainable as long as the earnings growth of these US growth stocks remained superior. But at least in the short term, this seems to be coming to an end. And that is not just because of the disappointing figures from Amazon.

Dislocation of Europe’s energy supplies, inflation, increased interest rates, Covid lockdowns in China… The list of factors creating headwinds for investors is long. A pair of French boutique-fund managers visiting Luxembourg explained that these problems however do not require strategies to be fundamentally rethought.

DNCA Finance, a Paris-based boutique investment firm that is part of Natixis group, said on Friday it has hired Jo Switten and Nicolas Dubuisson, who both until recently worked for Carmignac, to strengthen its sales team for the Belgian and Luxembourg markets.