Investment Officer Luxembourg

Continuation funds, once a post-crisis workaround for expiring vehicles in weak exit markets, are booming and find themselves at the centre of growing criticism.

Last Friday, it finally happened: Moody’s—the last credit rating agency still holding on to a shred of faith in Uncle Sam—downgraded the United States from AAA to Aa1. America is now officially among the ranks of “almost-but-not-quite-perfect” countries. It’s a bit like a high school student going from a 10 to a 9.5—still excellent, but mom and dad are disappointed nonetheless.

The rise of Eltif 2.0 and private market retail access is exposing a critical weakness: legacy reporting systems that cannot meet modern client expectations.

In an era of industry consolidation and shrinking margins, Allianz Global Investors is choosing defiance over dependence.

The US economy contracted at a rate of 0.3 percent in the first quarter of 2025. The slowdown in GDP growth was driven by a surge in imports, as US firms attempted to front-run tariffs. The first-quarter decline marks a sharp turn for the economy after GDP grew at a 2.4 percent annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2024.

In the world of finance, averages are useless. Concepts like extrapolation, correlation, and diversification do little more than invite disaster—or, at the very least, significantly lower returns than are otherwise achievable. “Modern portfolio theory is bullshit,” declared Nassim Taleb, the legendary author of The Black Swan.

Remember that BBC quiz show with the notoriously blunt Anne Robinson, who ended each round with the line, “You are the weakest link. Goodbye”? In The Weakest Link, the contestant deemed weakest by the others was eliminated—on the logic that a weak player could damage the prize pot. That sounds rather economic. So why is the European Central Bank (ECB) doing the exact opposite?