The latest news on investment offerings, financial products and other services relevant to wealth advisors and their clients.

Columbia Threadneedle
Columbia Threadneedle Investments is rebranding the BMO GAM (EMEA) business, acquired last year, to Columbia Threadneedle Investments. The change will take place in July.

The BMO fund ranges will be renamed with the prefix CT, reflecting the Columbia Threadneedle branding. It is intended that the Threadneedle-named fund range will also transition to the CT prefix over time from July, providing consistency across the combined open-ended retail fund ranges in Europe, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, Columbia Threadneedle said in a statement.

The naming convention for the Columbia funds range in the US remains the same.

Shuaa Capital
Shuaa Capital has launched a venture debt fund in the Gulf Cooperation Council region with a value of $250 million, to support growth in regional technology and tech-enabled enterprises. The firm said the fund is the largest of its kind in the GCC region.

The Dubai-based investment banking and asset management firm said in a statement that the fund was aimed at those seeking alternative sources of funding without significantly diluting their shareholding.

“SHUAA Venture Partners will provide alternative capital solutions to high growth companies across the GCC,” Natasha Hannoun, head of debt at Shuaa Capital, said.

The firm has $545 million deployed in private debt transactions and $3 billion structured across sectors. Most recently it invested $50 million in Pure Harvest and the private investment in public equity (PIPE) funding for Anghami, the first Arab tech company to list on NASDAQ in New York last month, it said in its statement.

Shuaa said there has been a 112 per cent surge in venture capital deals during 2021 from a year ago, coming in at more than $1.7 billion across 281 deals, mostly early-stage investments.

Amundi
Amundi, the European asset management house, has made a range of its exchange-traded funds more “climate conscious”.

A total of nine ETFs, from 1 March and accounting for more than €12 billion in assets under management, now track the MSCI SRI Filtered PAB indices.

The ETFs are in line with the EU’s Paris-Aligned Benchmark (PAB) climate indices, designed to support a Net-Zero target for CO2 emissions by 2050 and limit the global average increase in temperature to 1.5°C. The new indices replicated by these Amundi ETFs follow a trajectory of a 7 per cent absolute carbon emissions cut on an annual basis and integrate an immediate reduction of 50 per cent of the carbon intensity compared to the investable universe.

In addition, the indices tracked by four other Amundi ETFs have also been changed to integrate climate criteria. These ETFs now track MSCI ESG Broad CTB Select indices, which were built in line with the objectives of the EU’s Climate Transition Benchmark (CTB) indices, the Paris-headquartered firm said in a statement late last week.