Ready for EBA, green bond fund, €11bn in debt

“Luxembourg is ready to host the EBA in Luxembourg”. So said Pierre Gramegna, the DP finance minister, in a response to a parliamentary question. The grand duchy is suited to host the European Banking Authority because of “the ecosystem that exists in Luxembourg as European capital and international financial centre” and its “multilingual and multicultural environment”. Gremegna also repeated the government’s previous claim that Luxembourg has the legal right to host the European regulatory agency under EU treaties. Austria, France, Ireland and the Netherlands are also vying to host the EBA after it relocates from London post-Brexit.
An investment arm of the World Bank has launched a green bond fund dedicated to emerging markets that will be based in Luxembourg. The International Finance Corporation’s Green Cornerstone aims to manage €2bn. The IFC has seeded the fund with $325m and appointed Amundi, a French asset manager, to sell the fund to European institutional investors. A spokesperson for Amundi said there was already interest among several pension funds in France, the Netherlands and Sweden.
“With more than 386 registered, we are now full”, said Jérôme Wittamer. The chairman of the Luxembourg Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (LPEA) was speaking at a press conference in advance of the trade group’s first “LPEA Insight” event, to be held Wednesday at the Philharmonie. A preview of the event can be found in the Delano May 2017 print edition.
One of Luxembourg’s best known money laundering prosecutors has formally taken his retirement. Carlos Zeyen has been on sick leave since the summer of 2013, but will officially retire “due to disability” on 1 May. After joining the public prosecutor’s office in 1998, Zeyen led several terrorism financing cases and the inquiry into the “Clearstream affair”. But in January 2013, the newspaper Bild said that he was involved in the misappropriation of German political party funds in the 1990s, when Zeyen was still in the private sector.
The grand duchy’s public debt amounts to 20% of GDP, the second lowest ratio in the EU. That placed Luxembourg between Estonia (9.5%) and Bulgaria (29.5%), reported Eurostat. The grand duchy owed €10.85bn at the end of 2016.