Investment Officer Luxembourg

In the financial sector, less than 30 percent of all executive positions are held by women. In terms of gender equality, therefore, there is still room for improvement. Women in Finance, an initiative launched in 2018 by Febelfin, brings together ladies who want to change that, and with success.

The Dutch private bank Van Lanschot Kempen has engaged BNP Paribas Securities Services as custodian for, among other things, custody, investment administration of the funds branch and custody and clearing activities for the bank. It concerns a mandate of EUR 16 billion in total.

At more than USD 15 trillion, the Chinese bond market is the second largest in the world. China only has to surpass the United States. China is therefore the second-largest economy in the world and the Chinese economy is already almost 20% larger than the United States in purchasing power parity terms. Yet many investors outside China hardly have any positions in Chinese bonds. 

This while, at this time, there is a high added value, both in terms of return and diversification in a broadly diversified bond portfolio.

Confidence in Chinese investments has taken a knock following the recent tightening of Chinese regulations. However, fund manager Fidelity International believes the Chinese growth story is intact and there are opportunities for long-term investors as the underlying trends have remained intact despite increased state intervention.

Investors are often men, and they usually invest in companies run by men. A vicious circle that the investment fund We Are Jane wants to break. Founded by serial entrepreneur Conny Vandendriessche (centre of the picture) and Gimv veterans Muriel Uytterhaegen (left) and Eline Talboom (right), they invest only in companies led by women, or where the shareholders or management are mostly women. A choice that is anything but philanthropy, because We Are Jane wants to achieve a nice return.

As an example of the pressure put on the financial sector to respond to the urgency of climate change, Dutch education and government sector employee pension fund ABP is tightening up its investment policy. They explain this move by referring to reports on the climate crisis that have shown that it must move faster, and supporters are calling for action to be taken.

The emergence of distributed ledger technology (DLT), of which blockchain is a form, could bring about a shift from a platform economy to a protocol economy. In this, data is the key to the economy, explained Ralph Wessels of ABN Amro in an article published by his employer on tokenisation, part of a three-part series on cryptocurrencies published by the bank. 

Pimco is not too worried about the economic slowdown and rising inflation, as these are largely related to a temporary disruption. Opportunities in the credit and bond markets have become scarcer and finding them requires a lot of effort.

This is what emerges from an interview with Eve Tournier, Head of European Credit Portfolio Management at Pimco and manager of the GIS Euro Credit Fund, among others.