Luxembourg start-up OKO Finance faces crisis after USAID shutdown
In another week of news dominated by the erratic pronouncements coming out of the White House, we brought you the story of a Luxembourg-based start-up, OKO Finance, which has lost a significant portion of its funding following the dismantling of USAID by US President Donald Trump, with support from “special government employee” Elon Musk.
OKO was founded in Israel in 2018 and relocated to Luxembourg a year later. It provides crop insurance to farmers in Mali, Uganda and Ivory Coast. USAID grants were expected to account for 75% of its cash flow in 2025, CEO Simon Schwall told the Luxembourg Times.
But on 28 January, Schwall received an email from USAID titled “Suspension of Grant Agreement”, instructing the company to immediately halt all programmes and expenditures tied to the grant.
“It threatens the very existence of OKO,” said Schwall about the cuts. “These are contracts that took years to obtain and projects that took months to prepare. And it is not only about the short term financial loss, but it also destroys the momentum that we need to maintain to reassure investors that we are on track to profitability.”
Luxembourg loses €6.7bn Amundi fund to Ireland
Amundi, one of Europe’s largest asset managers, has decided to move another of its Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) offerings from Luxembourg to Ireland to benefit from the country’s double taxation treaty with the US.
The company – located in Limpertsberg and with 98 staff in Luxembourg, according to its latest filings – in 2023 moved seven ETFs with total assets under management (AUM) of €12.3 billion.
In the latest move, the MSCI World V UCITS ETF will move to Ireland. At AUM of €6.7 billion, it is Amundi’s third-largest fund domiciled in Luxembourg. It will merge with the Amundi MSCI World UCITS ETF on 21 February, according to a notice sent to investors.
As the merger involves the sale of shares followed by an acquisition of new shares it “may trigger taxation on gains, if the investor has held his investment for a period shorter than six continuous months,” the asset manager told the Luxembourg Times. If the holding period was longer than six months, there would be no capital gains tax.
The move will be automatic for investors with existing shareholders set to receive shares of the Irish fund in exchange for their current holdings.
Luxembourg food safe, says agriculture minister after pesticide claims
A report on food safety published last week by environmental group Mouvement écologique (Méco) is misleading, Luxembourg’s agriculture minister Martine Hansen has said, after claims by the activists that more than half of non-organic produce contains pesticides.
Méco in its report analysed data by the Luxembourg Veterinary and Food Administration (Alva) on the presence of pesticides in food items sold on Luxembourg shelves. More than half of non-organic foods contain traces of pesticides, against around one in ten organic products, the organisation said.
“You have to put Mouvement écologique’s statement into context,” Hansen told the Luxembourg Times. “This [report] could lead people to believe that over 50% of our foods are dangerous to consume but that’s not the case.”
The 608 samples taken by Alva were not chosen “at random” but “target products that present a higher risk” of containing pesticides, the minister explained, adding that the administration is one of the top three countries in the world in terms of food samples tested per capita.
“Food in Luxembourg and the EU is safe,” Hansen said.
Luxembourg’s SES hurt by ‘negative’ outlook from Moody’s
Luxembourg satellite giant SES is dismissing a growing number of doubters about its financial prospects, saying that its 2024 results to be released next week are better than naysayers expect with annual revenues approaching €2 billion.
“SES management looks forward to announcing its full year 2024 results and discussing these,” the company said in response to Moody’s Ratings service changing its outlook on the company to “negative.”
In an update issued on Tuesday, Moody’s expressed concerns but did not downgrade its rating on SES’s debt repayment ability below what is now the lowest level that most pension funds and other institutional investors will accept.
“The negative outlook reflects the more difficult market conditions for the satellite industry, with increased risk on the combined entity’s ability to generate positive earnings growth over 2025-26,” the global debt-evaluator said.
App allows Luxembourg residents to file airport noise complaints
People living in neighbourhoods close to Luxembourg’s only commercial airport can now file a complaint to authorities about flight noise directly from their mobile phones through a new application.
The feature, launched earlier this month by Skynoise Luxembourg, aims to speed up the process of reporting issues to the country’s air traffic agency, the Administration de la navigation aérienne (ANA).
The Skynoise Luxembourg app was created last year by Lucien Clavier, a data scientist who said he became all too familiar with flight noise from the airport in Findel during six years living in various districts of Luxembourg’s capital.
“The idea with the new format is that you can submit a complaint directly to ANA via the app,” he told the Luxembourg Times in an interview, adding that it would speed up the current process of completing a form which runs to several pages.
The launch of the feature comes as more than 3,000 night flights arrived at or departed from Luxembourg Airport last year, a 20% increase on 2023, despite a supposed curfew between 23:00 and 06:00.