Agefi Luxembourg - septembre 2026

AGEFI Luxembourg 6 Septembre 2026 Économie & Banques ByMike SCHMIT, CIOPrivate BankingEurope, Edmond de Rothschild B ondmarketsmay not be signal­ ling a crisis. Themore important question iswhether other assets are prepared for a structurally higher price of capital. For more than a decade, investors livedinaworldinwhichmoneywas almost free. Central banks sup­ pressedvolatility,governmentbonds offered little or no income, and the search for yield pushed capital into equities,credit,realestateandprivate markets. Thatworld is fading fast. Longtermsovereignyieldshaverisen sharply across developedmarkets. In the UnitedStates,the10yearTreasuryisagainapproach­ ing 5%, while longdated yields in Europe, the UK and Japan have also moved to levels not seen for manyyears.Thetemptationistoreadthisasasimple warningabout excessivepublicdebt. Fiscal concerns undeniablymatter.Buttheyareonlypartofthestory. The more uncomfortable possibility is that bond yields are not obviously “too high” at all. Theymay simplybereturningtolevelsconsistentwithstronger nominal growth, more persistent inflation and a much more intense global competition for capital. That distinction matters, because the real fault line maynot lie in the bondmarket itself. Itmay lie in the assetsthatwerepricedduringfifteenyearsofextraor­ dinarily cheapmoney. Afiscal problem, but not only a fiscal problem The US fiscal position is difficult to ignore. Federal debt has passed $40 trillion, while budget deficits re­ mainunusuallylargeforaneconomythatisnotinre­ cession.Risinginterestcostsarethemselvesbecoming an increasingly important part of the fiscal equation. YethigherTreasuryyieldsdonotnecessarilymeanin­ vestors expect an imminent debt crisis.Amoreuseful way of thinking about the adjustment is through the termpremium:investorsaredemandinggreatercom­ pensation for committing capital for ten, twenty or thirty years when the supply of government debt is rising and the future pathof inflation is less certain. Thereisalsoasecondforceatwork.TheUSeconomy remainsremarkablyresilient.NominalGDPisgrow­ ing at around 6%, comfortably above the yield on the 10year Treasury. Seen through that lens, a longtermyieldaround5%looks less like amar­ ket malfunction than a return towards a histor­ ically more normal relationship between economic growth and the cost of money. The implication is important: investors waiting for longtermrates to fall back towards the levels of the 2010s may be waiting for a world that no longer exists. Aglobal competition for capital Governments are not the only borrowers with large financing needs. The investment require­ ments facing theworld economy are ex­ panding rapidly. TheAI buildout alone is generating extraordinary demand for data centres, semiconductors, electric­ ity generation, grid infrastructure and skilled labour. Defence expenditure is rising across Europe. The energy transition requires enormous capital spending. At the same time, ageing populations may reduce the rate at which some advanced economies accumulate savings. The result is straightforward:more borrowers are competing for a finite pool of longterm capital. AI is particularly interesting because its impact on interest rates may work in opposite directions over time. In the near term, the investment boom can be inflationary. It increases demand for scarce chips, energy, construction capacity and engineering tal­ ent, while companies raise large amounts of capital to finance investment. Longer term, however, AI may lift productivity, contain unit labour costs and alloweconomies to grow faster without generating the same inflationpressure. Inotherwords,AImay be one reason yields remain high today and one reason they eventuallymoderate tomorrow. Japan changes the global capital equation Japanaddsanotherdimension.Fordecades,Japanese government bonds represented the extreme version of the lowrate world: nearzero yields, a deeply in­ volved central bank and a large domestic savings pool. That regime is changing as Japanese interest rates normalise. The currency story needs to be read in that context. The yen weakened to almost 164 per dollar in late July, prompting an unusual joint US­ Japanese intervention. Since then, it has reversed sharply and is now trading around 153, close to a sevenmonth high. The move reflects expectations of further Bank of Japan tightening, possible repa­ triation of Japanese capital and explicit US support for a stronger yen. This matters for global markets in two ways. First, higher Japanese yields make domestic bonds more attractive relative to foreign assets and can encour­ age Japanese investors to bring capital home. Sec­ ond, Washington has an interest in avoiding renewed yen weakness severe enough to force Japan tofinance currency intervention throughsales of dollar assets, including US Treasuries. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has made that position un­ usually explicit, warning traders against betting on renewed yenweakness. The important point is therefore not that a weak yen is currently pushing Treasury yields higher. It is that the normalisation of Japanese rates and the effort to stabilise the yen can alter global capital flows. A stronger yen may reduce the immediate risk of Japanese official Treasury sales, but it can also accel­ erate the unwinding of yenfunded carry trades and make repatriationmore attractive. Japan is becoming amore active variable in the global price of capital. Where the pressure could appear The central question is therefore not whether a 5% Treasury yield is inherently dangerous. It is whether other asset classes are correctly priced for a world in which 45%riskfree rates persist. Equities are the obvious candidate. Higher discount ratesreducethepresentvalueoffuturecashflowsand should, all else equal, compress valuation multiples. So far, strong earnings and enthusiasm surrounding AI havemore than offset that effect. But that equilib­ riumleaveslessroomfordisappointment.Expensive growth stocks can tolerate high yields when profits accelerate;theybecomeconsiderablymorevulnerable if earningsmomentumslows. Credit markets present a similar paradox. Corporate spreads remainunusually tight despitemuch higher government bond yields. That reflects resilient earn­ ings and investor confidence, but it alsomeans mar­ kets offer limited compensation for a deterioration in the cycle. If growthweakens while refinancing takes place at materially higher rates, credit spreads could adjustmuchmore quickly than theyhave so far. Realestatefacesaslowerbutmoremechanicalrepric­ ing. Property valuations ultimately have to compete with the return available on government bonds. When a supposedly riskfree asset yields close to 5%, therequiredreturnoncommercialpropertymustrise aswell. That adjustment does not happen overnight, but neither can it be avoided indefinitely. Private markets may be the least transparent part of the transmission mechanism. Assets that are valued infrequentlycanappearinsulatedfrompublicmarket volatility. Economically, however, they are not insu­ lated from the cost of capital. Higher financing costs, lowerexitmultiplesandmoredemandingreturnhur­ dles eventually feed through. Even policymakers are becoming more sensitive to the long end of the curve. The US Treasury has ex­ panded liquiditysupport buybacks for longerdated securities,increasingthemaximumsizeofoperations in the 10to30year sectors from $2 billion to at least $4billion.Suchmeasurescanimprovemarketliquid­ ity and influence the amount of duration investors need to absorb at themargin, but theydo not change the underlying fiscal arithmetic or the fundamental price investors demand for longtermcapital. Anewequilibriumrather than a crisis Noneofthismeansthatabondmarketaccidentisin­ evitable.Infact,thestrongestargumentagainstacrisis ispreciselythestrengthoftheeconomy.Ifproductivity improves,earningsremainrobustandinflationgrad­ ually moderates, today’s yields may prove entirely sustainable. But that would not takemarkets back to the old regime. Itwould confirma newone. Theerafollowingtheglobalfinancialcrisiswaschar­ acterisedbyscarcegrowth,abundantsavingsandag­ gressive centralbank intervention. The emerging environment looks very different: stronger invest­ ment demand, much larger government borrowing requirements, geopolitical fragmentation and a higher price for longterm capital. That world is not necessarilyworse.Bondsonceagainoffermeaningful income. Savers are rewarded. Capital allocationmay become more disciplined. But assets that depended on permanently falling discount rates will face a much higher hurdle. Thequestion, therefore, iswhetherfinancialmarkets have fully adjusted to the possibility that the long­ termprice of capital has moved structurally higher and that the old world of almostfree money is not coming back. The New Price of Money: What Rising BondYields Mean for EveryAsset Class L es 7 et 8 septembre 2026, Xavier Bettel, VicePremier ministre, ministre des Af­ faires étrangères et duCommerce extérieur, et LexDelles, ministre de lʹÉconomie, des PME, de lʹÉnergie et du Tourisme, ont effectué une visite de travail en Inde. Cedéplacement sʹinscrit dans le cadredu renforcement des relations bilatérales entre les deux pays, avec pour objectif dʹouvrir de nouvelles opportunités pour les entreprises luxembourgeoises sur le marché indien. Premiers échanges àNewDelhi Le 7 septembre, la délégation a fait étape à New Delhi où des entrevues de haut niveau ont eu lieu avec les autorités indiennes. Xavier Bettel sʹest entretenu avec le ministre des Affaires extérieures, Dr Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, pour la deuxième fois en 2026, après sonpassage auLuxembourg en janvier. Les échanges ont principalement porté sur les relations bilatérales, y compris le rôle de la diaspora indienne, actuelle­ ment 10 ᵉ communauté étrangère au Luxembourg. Les ministres ont également abordé les relations économiques, avec un accent sur les secteurs de lʹespace et des satel­ lites, de la logistique, de lʹacier, de la finance et de la recherche. Le rôle de lʹInde dans les relations exté­ rieures a également figuré au centre des discussions, ainsi la situation au Moyen­ OrientetlʹagressionrussecontrelʹUkraine ont été abordées. Lors de la réunion, le ministre Bettel a remercié le ministre Jaishankar pour lʹaccueil chaleureux en Inde et a déclaré : « LʹInde constitue un parte­ naire de premier plan pour le Luxembourg. De nombreuses opportu­ nités demeurent pour approfondir les relations entre nos deux pays, je vois cette visite comme une importante étape dans une relation qui va encore sʹinten­ sifier au cours des prochaines années. » Le ministre Bettel a également eu un entretien avec leministre duCommerce et de lʹIndustrie, Piyush Goyal. Ces échanges portaient également sur le commerce et les relations économiques entre le Luxembourg et lʹInde. De son côté, Lex Delles sʹest entretenu avec le ministre de la Science et de la Technologie, le Dr Jitendra Singh, pour faire le point sur la coopération spatiale entre lʹInde et le Luxembourg, notam­ ment à travers le mémorandum dʹen­ tente signé entre lʹIndianSpaceResearch Organisation (ISRO) et la Luxembourg SpaceAgency (LSA). Les deux parties ont exploré des pistes concrètespourrenforcerlescollaborations institutionnelles et commerciales dans ce secteur. Le ministre Delles a également rencontré le ministre dʹÉtat chargé de lʹAcier, Bhupathiraju Srinivasa Varma, pour discuter des priorités indiennes en matièredʹaciervertetdedécarbonationde la production sidérurgique. Lajournéesʹestconclueparuneréception économiqueorganiséeà lʹAmbassadedu Luxembourg. Cet événement a permis derenforcerlesliensentrelesacteurséco­ nomiques des deux pays et de préparer le terrain pour la future mission écono­ mique luxembourgeoise en Inde. Nouveau campus de SES à Chennai Le 8 septembre, la délégation sʹest ren­ due àChennai, pour la visite de lʹIndian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras Research Park, un pôle dʹexcellence technologique et un vivier de startups innovantes. Lors de cette visite, le ministre Delles a pu échanger avec des représentants de jeunes entreprises spatiales indiennes, telles que Satlabs Space Systems, Susan Future Technologies et Solinas Integrity. Le ministre Delles sʹest ensuite entre­ tenu avec des étudiants de lʹIITMadras, mettant en lumière le potentiel de coo­ pération entre le Luxembourg et lʹInde dans lʹinnovation et lʹentrepreneuriat, ainsi que les opportunités offertes aux jeunes talents. Lʹaprèsmidi a été marquée par lʹinau­ guration du nouveau campus de SES à Chennai, un événement symbolique qui souligne lʹengagement du Luxembourg en Inde. En présence dʹAdel AlSaleh, CEO de SES Satellites, les ministres ont participé à une cérémonie traditionnelle indienne, suivie dʹune visite des nou­ velles installations et dʹune rencontre avec les équipes locales. Bangalore, nouveaupôle spatial ÀBangalore, dernière étapede lavisite le 9 septembre, Lex Delles a participé à la 9e édition de la Bengaluru Space Expo, un salon majeur consacré aux technolo­ gies spatiales réunissant cette année 300 exposants de 21 pays. Le ministre a rencontré le président de lʹINSPACe et le secrétaire scientifiquede lʹISRO afin dʹidentifier de nouvelles pos­ sibilités de coopération dans le secteur spatial. Il a également échangé avec les fondateurs de plusieurs startup indiennes, dont Skyroot, Galaxeye et BellatrixAerospace,surlessynergiesavec lʹécosystème spatial luxembourgeois. Une réception de networking consacrée à lʹinnovation, organisée en présence du Chief Minister du Karnataka, Shri D. K. Shivakumar, a conclu cette visite de tra­ vail. Lʹévénement a rassemblé une tren­ taine de participants, pour explorer de nouvelles opportunités de partenariat. Àlʹissue de la visite, LexDelles a déclaré : «Cettevisite apermisde renforcer les re­ lations économiques entre le Luxem­ bourget lʹIndeet dʹidentifierdenouvelles perspectivesdecoopérationdansdessec­ teurs stratégiques tels que le spatial, lʹin­ novationet les technologies industrielles. Les rencontres organisées à New Delhi, Chennai et Bangaloreont confirmé ledy­ namisme et le potentiel de lʹInde, cin­ quième économie mondiale et lʹun des principauxmoteurs de la croissance éco­ nomiquemondiale. Les échangesmenés aucoursde cesderniers jours constituent unebase solidepour approfondir nos re­ lations économiques. » Source : ministère de lʹÉconomie Le Luxembourg renforce ses liens économiques avec l’Inde ©MAE