Investment Officer Luxembourg

Dear reader, with the power struggle between China and the U.S., geopolitics has made a comeback on the investor agenda. Reason for us as editors to create a series on geopolitics and investing. In seven episodes, we will discuss various geopolitical and market shifts that are changing the investor landscape, from Europe’s challenges to China’s rise, AI impacts and the global energy transition.

In recent months, there has been a notable absence of discourse surrounding the prospect of a recession. The prevailing discussions among economists and financial analysts now revolve around whether we will experience a soft landing or no landing at all. The notion of a hard landing seems to have fallen out of favour. However, it is premature to entirely dismiss the possibility of a recession.

Speaking at an ALFI event in New York, the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission, SEC, and Luxembourg financial supervisor CSSF have jointly voiced significant concerns about “increasingly complicated fee structures” in the fund industry, warning that these practices may be obscuring the true costs for investors. 

Emmanuel Gutton, a well-known legal expert in Luxembourg who until recently served as deputy CEO at the Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry (Alfi), has joined New York-headquartered law firm White & Case LLP as funds partner. 

Gutton will advise on the creation, structuring and conversion of funds across a wide range of asset classes including private equity and real estate. The firm said he will also assist in setting-up and advising investment fund managers. 

This week, we look at bond funds that can freely explore the entire fixed-income and currency universe in search of the best opportunities. Given that bonds, like other types of investments, can be a challenging asset class to predict, it might be a wise choice to let a team of experts decide how to position a portfolio.

Luxembourg’s financial supervisor Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier, CSSF, and Alfi, the Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry, will host a joint webinar on 6 June to discuss the new new rules for investment funds concerning errors in Net Asset Value (NAV) calculations, breaches of investment rules, and other related errors in investment funds. The CSSF announced the new rules in March as per CSSF Circular 24/856. 

Vanguard Group has announced that Salim Ramji, formerly of BlackRock, will become its new CEO on July 8th. Ramji, who will also join the board of directors, will take over from Tim Buckley.

Until recently, Ramji was responsible for BlackRock’s exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and index investments divisions, where he managed to grow the ETF business from $1 trillion to $2.5 trillion.

Brendan Ballou’s book “Plunder” exposes how private equity firms, like Carlyle, harm businesses and evade legal responsibility, despite promising high returns. In this interview, Ballou discusses the alarming frequency and impact of these practices.