European long-term investment funds saw net outflows of €65.6bn in December 2018, according to Lipper, an investment fund data provider that is part of the Thomson Reuters group.

Luxembourg represented the biggest chunk of that (-€28.8bn), followed by France (€24.4bn) and less so by Sweden (-€2.3bn), Lipper said on 28 January 2019.

Detlef Glow, head of EMEA research at Lipper, wrote in a research memo:

“After unexpectedly high outflows in October and November, European investors pulled further away from long-term mutual funds in December as the market environment and general sentiment remained negative. As a consequence, December was the eighth month in a row posting net outflows from long-term mutual funds after 16 consecutive months showing net inflows.”

Bond funds in Europe saw net outflows of €25.9bn, with the biggest share made up of bond funds domiciled in Luxembourg (-€14.9bn), France (-€3.7bn) and Ireland (-€1.5bn).

Equity funds recorded net outflows of €18.7bn, led by Luxembourg (-€11.5bn), Ireland (-€4.7bn) and France (-€3.6bn).

Mixed asset funds were down by €8.7bn in December 2018, with more half of that represented by Luxembourg domiciled funds (-€4.6bn), followed by France (-€1.3bn) and Ireland (-€1.1bn).

Alternative Ucits funds registered net outflows of €12.2bn, with again more than half of that figure coming from Luxembourg-based funds (-€6.2bn), trailed by Ireland (-€3.8bn) and the UK (-€1.5bn), Lipper reported.

That said, two of the ten best selling long-term funds in December 2018 were domiciled in Luxembourg: an M&G Europe large-cap value equity fund (with estimated net sales of €1.7bn) and an EIS European diversified bond fund (with estimated net sales of €674m).

Separate figures from the Efama trade association (PDF), released last month, showed that Luxembourg was home to more than a third of European Ucits (for retail investors) assets under management at the end of the third quarter of 2018. The same report said that more than 11% of alternative fund (for professional investors) assets were domiciled in Luxembourg.