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Danish real estate charity builds balance

Gert Poulsen, chief investment officer of the €3-billion ($3.9-billion) Danish charity Realdania, likes both property and the risk of earthquakes. The connection, Poulsen quickly adds, is not because he welcomes natural disasters, but due to Realdania’s distinctive history. Based in Copenhagen, Realdania was founded in 2000 when Danske Bank, the country’s largest lender, bought the

Equity enthusiasm grips Finnish state fund

Strong listed equity returns have seen the €15.8-billion ($20.8-billion) Finnish State Pension Fund, VER, increase the asset class to 40.3 per cent of its portfolio, up from 36.4 per cent at the end of 2011. Timo Löyttyniemi, chief executive of VER, explains that the fund made net equity purchases of $74 million in 2012 while

Namibia’s challenge: development and depreciation

Namibia maybe one of the youngest countries in Africa but it has nurtured one of the continent’s biggest pension funds into life since gaining independence from South Africa in 1990. The Windhoek-based N$61-billion ($6.8-billion) Government Institutions Pension Fund, GIPF, accounts for over three quarters of Namibia’s entire pension assets and is the only defined benefit

CERN fund: the collision of investment ideas?

Its core business involves expanding the realm of science by beaming particles close to the speed of light and it invented the web – as we know it – as a nice little side project. You would perhaps then expect the CHF 3.6-billion ($3.9-billion) pension fund of the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, CERN, to

NZ Super: contrarian Kiwis rewrite rules

No one who works at New Zealand Super has a business card that has an asset class attached to it. This simple representation speaks volumes to the investment approach taken by the fund. One could work for the strategy team or the investment analysis team, but the investment structure by which NZ Super invests, such

NOW: Pensions crosses borders

In the city of Hillerød outside Copenhagen in Denmark, a small group of Danes want to teach the United Kingdom’s pensions industry a thing or two. Where UK trustees tend to see fund choice as a blessing, Denmark’s DKK579-billion ($101.6-billion) public pension plan ATP has always viewed picking and choosing between different managers as more