(L-R): Nicolas Mackel, LFF; Minister of Finance, Pierre Gramegna; Tom Theobald, LFF;
On Wednesday 10 January 2018, the Cercle Cité in Luxembourg city centre hosted a reception for the official 10th anniversary of the birth of Luxembourg for Finance (LFF); earlier in the morning a press conference was held on the same topic at the House of Finance in Luxembourg-Kirchberg.
The ten years of LFF’s existence happen to coincide with a particularly eventful decade for the Luxembourg financial centre and the global financial industry as a whole, marked by several important developments: the global financial crisis and the ensuing wave of regulations, the international move towards tax transparency, the rapid digitalisation of financial services, and a marked global shift towards sustainable investments.
It has moreover been a decade of acronyms for the financial industry: CRD4, MiFID, PSD (1 and 2), CRS, FATCA, BEPS, PRIPS and KIID, AIFMD, SSM and ESAs … and the list goes on. For the Luxembourg financial centre it has also been a decade of increasing internationalisation: Luxembourg’s fund industry has grown from €1.6 trillion to €4 trillion AUM and new markets have opened up (with funds today being distributed in 70 markets), nearly a third of clients in Luxembourg’s private banking industry now come from outside the EU (up from around 15% a decade ago) and the country is today the European home of 7 Chinese banks and accounts for 60% of European funds investing in mainland China.
In its role as agency for the development of the financial centre, Luxembourg for Finance has not only been a witness to these developments but has contributed, in close coordination with its financial sector stakeholders and the Luxembourg government, to the financial centre’s efforts to meet some of these challenges and leverage new opportunities. Indeed, while LFF is known in particular for the visible part of its work, notably via its communication activities and the events and roadshows the agency organises, there is an entire iceberg of less obviously visible activities below the surface that have contributed to the development of Luxembourg’s financial centre over the past decade.
Luxembourg's Finance Minister Pierre Gramegna said: "As a public-private partnership, LFF can convey messages with a common voice, and thus a much stronger voice than each of the shareholders of LFF would have individually. Over the last 10 years, LFF has been putting into practice a unique approach, which has been developing a dialogue and a lasting relationship rather than focusing on short term results.”
