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 … Read more
On one hand, the decision by one of the United Kingdom’s leading foods businesses, Dairy Crest, to plug its £84-million ($130-million) pension deficit with cheese smacks of desperation. Any proactive investment strategy to get the $1.2-billion pension fund back on track has been abandoned for a funding measure using unconventional sponsor assets to plug investment … Read more
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 … Read more
In 2010 PGGM conducted a study to see if it was possible to reduce the number of companies it invested in from 4000 to 400, based on its environmental, social and governance leanings, and still maintain it’s beta risk/return profile. The idea was that the €133-billion ($174-billion) fund would better know and understand what it … Read more
Jan Tamerus, actuary director at PGGM, was instrumental in developing the new Dutch pension defined-ambition structure. Back in 2006, he was involved in looking at the sustainability of the defined benefit system and in concluding it was not in fact sustainable, the idea of defined ambition evolved. One of the key reasons for not going … Read more
Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) has $1.4 trillion in assets and is the world’s largest pension fund. The institutional structure and the investment style of GPIF differ from those of other public pension reserve funds. This article describes how GPIF is structured and how it works,then compares it with Canadian and American public pension … Read more
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