Investment Officer Luxembourg

Goldman Sachs has struck a tremendous blow with its takeover of NN Investment Partners, the asset management arm of Dutch insurer NN Group, which was announced a few days ago.

“The United States remains the place to be for investors, despite the significant outperformance in recent years. Nowhere are you better served as an equity investor. For emerging markets, caution is especially necessary after the recent debacles in China.

It is better to reduce overweight positions to neutral and wait until the fog lifts. Especially in China,” investment strategist, consultant and author Jan Longeval of Kounselor Consulting BV told Investment Officer in a recent conversation.

Investment Officer Luxembourg recently had an opportunity to speak with Stephan Matti (pictured above), Group Head of Asset Servicing & Financial Intermediaries at Quintet Private Bank, about his role and the advantages of offering asset servicing and financial intermediary services from within an organisation that also has a large private banking operation.

As an investor or policy maker, you are constantly busy making decisions: which strategy do I follow, which risks do I want to accept or not, how do I position my portfolio, and so on. Since nobody can predict the future exactly, the circumstances under which decisions are made are always uncertain.

Decision-making therefore requires careful consideration of the pros and cons of each decision. Making such assessments is therefore a core task for policymakers. 

Ultimately, the price of oil is determined by supply and demand. What is special about the oil price is that, in theory, there are several equilibrium prices. This is because a large part of the supply is linked to a state budget. Where normally the supply goes down when the oil price goes down, there are countries that in the past pumped more oil to realise the same yield.

Knowing that the final price is determined by the marginal buyer and the marginal seller, identifying these two parties is essential for predicting the oil price.

“Risks in real estate markets were on the rise” in 2020 according to the recently-published annual report by the CSSF financial regulator. A range of indicators point to the increased level of debt across the Luxembourg economy and with it, the risks to local lenders. This has driven the CSSF to act to reduce vulnerabilities. 

Five years after he was scouted for ADO’s youth academy in the The Hague, Netherlands, 16-year-old Michael Vakalopoulos was asked if he wanted to play in the Greek national team. It brought him a professional football career, with employers such as ADO, PSV, Vitesse and SC Veendam. At Pimco, the 31-year-old account manager can still put his energies into the company football team that he plays 5-a-side football with.

Financial services firms have paid attention as a variety of mostly-American-owned digital companies have gained increasing market share, a trend that has increased notably during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Since Amazon is one of the best-known of these firms, those who want to emulate its success have dubbed the process “Amazonisation”, a concept explored in more detail by a Luxembourg for Finance session held earlier this year.