Investment Officer Luxembourg

Nicolas Mackel, CEO of Luxembourg For Finance, speaks to us about Luxembourg’s role as a home for global funds, Brexit, EU cooperation, global competition, and the challenge to attract talent.

The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg was home to a record EUR5.86 trillion in global financial assets at the end of last year, according to new data released on Friday by the country’s financial supervisor CSSF. That is up 17.8 percent from the end of the previous year.

It may be only 8 years away, but many representatives of Luxembourg’s financial centre have clear visions of a 2030 of higher technology but also a commitment to ESG values, but which may be a challenge to bring about.

An alternative investment vehicle that relatively swiftly established itself in Luxembourg continued to become more popular last year, an analysis of data filed with the country’s business register shows. If growth continues at the current pace, Luxembourg will be home to more than 2,000 such funds, known as Raifs, by the end of this year.

Rather than having to file the same publicly available financial and non-financial information multiple times with national and European regulators, why not have a single, centralised repository for this data? That’s the idea behind the European Single Access Point (ESAP) which has just been given the go-ahead. ESMA is now working on the devilish detail, with a view to launch at the start of 2025.

Top-level European securities markets regulator ESMA (European Securities and Markets Authority) has announced it will be examining the valuation of UCITS and open-ended alternative investment funds (AIFs) across the EU.

In the search for yield, some high yield investors are shifting to a broader mandate to invest in “below B”, the riskiest segment of high yield. PGIM recently repositioned two high yield funds to invest in CCC and CC bonds.