Investment Officer Luxembourg

The UK has taken a further cautious step towards the permanent regime which will govern access to its market for EU-based Ucits funds. This came with the introduction of regulations establishing the Overseas Funds Regime (OFR) on 23 February. This gives a clearer but still incomplete picture of how Luxembourg-based retail funds could access UK-based investors over the long term. 

M&G Investments is preparing to transform its Luxembourg hub for further growth in Europe with the objective of generating half of total group revenue within the next few years, its managing director Micaela Forelli told Investment Officer Luxembourg.

A Luxembourg-based investment firm that announced late last week that it will launch what it calls the first alternative fund investing entirely in crypto assets in this country by year’s end is counting on this country’s high quality regulation and supervision to put to rest long-standing doubts about crypto assets.

I am a fan of the Bank of America Global Fund Manager Survey. Not only because this survey covers many important investment themes or because the respondents are exclusively investors, as opposed to “connoisseurs” who give their opinions from the sidelines. The survey also regularly exposes the inconsistent behaviour of investors.

There are no winners in a war, but investors who held commodities in their portfolios in recent weeks were able to limit their losses, writes Morningstar’s Thomas De fauw in his Top 5 contribution for this week. Prices for energy, metals and agricultural products have been rising. 

The performance gap between value and growth is still significant since the beginning of the year, but growth is starting to catch up. With the Fed on a rate hike course, and with the possibility of a shallow recession in Europe and the US, growth stocks may paradoxically start to outperform again.

Economic growth in the EU will be “severely affected” by the disruption triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the European Commission has warned. Investor confidence in Germany, Europe’s largest economy, is falling sharply. The multiplicity of problematic macro factors is large and uncertainty about raw materials dominates. “In Europe it will be touch and go.”