Investment Officer Luxembourg

CapitalatWork is investigating the possibility of making small acquisitions in the Netherlands. The Belgian asset manager states it already has sufficient critical mass in its home market and the Luxembourg market, but is also looking at acquisition opportunities there.

This according to CEO Maarten Rooijakkers and CIO Erwin Deseyn (photo) of CapitalatWork in an interview with Investment Officer.

Factor investing in bonds is making inroads with both institutional and wholesale investors, according to a study by Invesco. However, there’s still a perceived lack of suitable products.

The year 2018 saw a 37% jump in the number of worldwide single family offices to no fewer than 7,300. Altogether family offices manage assets of nearly 6 trillion dollars.

Millennials are more interested in thematic investing than other age groups. Especially funds that focus on sustainability, education, infrastructure innovation, food and urbanisation are popular with Generation Y.

This transpires from the results of a study by Schroders among 25,000 investors who plan to invest at least 10,000 euros in the coming year.

A sudden liquidity drought is a serious threat to investors in European corporate bonds, so warns Ludovic Colin, manager of the Vontobel Bond Global Aggregate Fund. It means corporate bond markets on the continent are vulnerable to a correction.

Luxembourg banks want to work together to create common standards on certain compliance-related functions, a survey by the Luxembourg Bankers’ Association ABBL among its member showed. 93% of respondents said they see such cooperation as ‘valuable for the financial services community’.

Luxembourg’s banks are not yet reaping the benefits of Brexit as Brexit-related additional costs are outstripping the rise in revenues. This has led to a year-on-year decline of 5.4% in banks’ profits in the third quarter of 2019, according to CSSF figures.

“In 2018, 21 banks active [in Luxemburg] for more than three years had a cost to income ratio in excess of 100%, and there could be more this year,” CSSF director general Claude Marx said recently. As in the rest of Europe, Luxembourg’s B2C banks in particular are under diverse pressures. Some tough strategic choices are required.

Iqbal Khan, the new co-head of global wealth management at UBS, plans to break up the Swiss bank’s dedicated unit for the ultra wealthy. According to the Financial Times, this is part of an overhaul designed to increase higher-margin lending to some of the world’s biggest family offices.