Channeling the capital of others: How Luxembourg came to be asset managers’ “plumber” of choice

IF 4.6 1区社会学 Q1 ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space Pub Date : 2023-02-14 DOI:10.1177/0308518x221150012

Samuel Weeks

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引用次数: 1

Abstract

This article analyzes the development and growth of the administrative practices and structures necessary for leading asset management companies and other firms to create and sell their “product” of choice: investment funds. To investigate this problematic, I turn to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, which currently serves as the domicile for over $5 trillion in fund assets. Since the 1980s, Luxembourg's “offshore” financial center has become a leader in providing the “plumbing,” to quote an interviewee of mine, for worldwide asset manager capitalism. On offer in Luxembourg to asset managers are the routine-but-essential tasks such as domiciliation, compliance, calculation of net-asset values, and distributions. After a brief history of the rise of asset manager capitalism and Luxembourg's role in it, I detail the strategies by which the Grand Duchy's financial-center professionals collaborate to devise ways to service the ever-increasing varieties of investment funds for sale today. Having used the Luxembourg financial center as a case study, I conclude the article by arguing that, in order to understand contemporary asset manager capitalism, researchers should pay as much attention to its “collaborating administrators” in locales like Luxembourg as they currently do to its “competing titans of industry” on Wall Street or in the City of London.

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引导他人的资本:卢森堡如何成为资产管理公司的“管道工”之选

本文分析了主要资产管理公司和其他公司创建和销售其选择的“产品”:投资基金所必需的管理实践和结构的发展和增长。为了调查这个问题，我转向卢森堡大公国，它目前是超过5万亿美元基金资产的注册地。自20世纪80年代以来，卢森堡的“离岸”金融中心已经成为为全球资产管理公司资本主义提供“管道”的领导者，引用我的一位受访者的话。在卢森堡，向资产管理公司提供的是一些常规但必要的任务，如注册、合规、计算资产净值和分配。在简要介绍了资产管理资本主义的兴起历史和卢森堡在其中所扮演的角色之后，我详细介绍了大公国金融中心的专业人士合作制定的策略，以服务于今天不断增加的各种投资基金。在以卢森堡金融中心作为案例研究之后，我在文章的结尾提出，为了理解当代资产管理资本主义，研究人员应该像关注目前华尔街或伦敦金融城的“竞争巨头”一样，关注卢森堡等地的“合作管理者”。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Environment and Planning A-Economy and Space Multiple-

CiteScore

9.50

自引率

9.50%

发文量

100

期刊介绍： Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space is a pluralist and heterodox journal of economic research, principally concerned with questions of urban and regional restructuring, globalization, inequality, and uneven development. International in outlook and interdisciplinary in spirit, the journal is positioned at the forefront of theoretical and methodological innovation, welcoming substantive and empirical contributions that probe and problematize significant issues of economic, social, and political concern, especially where these advance new approaches. The horizons of Economy and Space are wide, but themes of recurrent concern for the journal include: global production and consumption networks; urban policy and politics; race, gender, and class; economies of technology, information and knowledge; money, banking, and finance; migration and mobility; resource production and distribution; and land, housing, labor, and commodity markets. To these ends, Economy and Space values a diverse array of theories, methods, and approaches, especially where these engage with research traditions, evolving debates, and new directions in urban and regional studies, in human geography, and in allied fields such as socioeconomics and the various traditions of political economy.