Investment Officer Luxembourg

An increasing number of chief executives recognises that sustainability is one of the main challenges they face over the coming years, a new survey among 3,000 CEOs said.

With macroeconomic factors and market sentiment dragging down yields, investors are wondering what to do with their real estate investments. For one of the most capital-intensive asset classes, isn’t rising interest generally a bad sign? “Conventional wisdom saying that real estate would always be a good inflation hedge is nonsense.”

Waving goodbye to what it calls “disflationary dynamics,” the European Central Bank on Wednesday sent clear signals that Eurozone interest rates will continue to rise for the foreseeable future after a first hike that could come as early as July. 

Total assets under management in the European fund industry fell to 14.5 trillion euro at the end of the first quarter from 15.3 trillion at the end of last year, according to the latest European Fund Markets Report by Refinitiv Lipper. 

The negative performance of the underlying markets contributed negative 696.4 billion euro to the decline over the quarter, while estimated net flows summed up to negative 88.6 billion euro by the end of March. 

Has growth in new registrations of Reserved Alternative Investment Funds, known as Raifs, in Luxembourg peaked? As Investment Officer readers have noted, growth tailed off in February and March. Marc Kriegsmann, Raif market specialist at leading Luxembourg Raif issuer Hauck & Aufhäuser, said the dynamic in the Raif market may be affected by increasingly stringent risk control processes and the presence of suitable alternatives. 

Anthos Fund & Asset Management BV, the asset manager of the Brenninkmeijer family’s holding company Cofra, takes pride in moving with the times. It is working on a major transformation, no mean feat in view of the international laws and regulations. Once the veil is lifted, Anthos will transform from a single to a multi-family office. 

Despite a wider uptake of alternative energy, fossil fuels like natural gas, oil and coal are here to stay for the next decades and the MSCI Global Energy Composite index will outperform both renewable energy stocks and the broad equity market over the next year, JP Morgan Asset Management said in its 2022 Annual Energy Paper.

The Nasdaq is in a clear downtrend. It is still being held up by the ‘generals’, the big tech heavyweights such as Alphabet, Microsoft and the like, but it is important to watch out.