AP2 appoints another new CIO

The SEK 204 billion ($28 billion) Second Swedish National Pension Fund/AP2 has appointed its fourth chief investment officer in four years, as the fund reports its best annual return since inception.

Hans Fahlin will take up his post in mid-April following the resignation of Johan Held who is leaving to head asset management at insurance firm AFA Forsakring.

Fahlin has 25 years’ experience in the financial industry, the past 17 years in asset management, with senior positions at Alfred Berg/ABN AMRO, including a position as chief executive for Alfred Berg Kapitalfovaltning.

He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee at the Institute for Financial Research and chairman of Inquire Europe, both organisations are engaged in building bridges between financial research and business practice within the financial industry.

He is the fourth person to fill the post since 2006 with Petter Odhnoff, Poul Winslow and Held all preceding him in that time.

AP2 made some internal asset management team changes last year and from January it decided to have fewer in-house mandates and less active in-house management of the global equities portfolios.

From that time portfolio management has been organised according to: equities management, fixed-income management, quantitative management, external mandates and strategic exposure and trading.

There are also two forums relating to tactical allocation and decisions about larger and more long-term deviations from the strategic portfolio.

The fund’s strategic portfolio as at June 2009 was 34 per cent foreign equities, 18 per cent Swedish equities, 5 per cent real estate, 40 per cent fixed income, and 3 per cent private equity.

It made a number of adjustments to its strategic portfolio during 2009 which were primarily a reallocation from global government bonds and global equities to credits and convertibles.

The fund returned 20.3 per cent for the year net of expenses, the best result since its inception in 2001, and the fund’s active management generated an active return of 1.2 per cent.