End of an era as APG appoints new CIO

A focus on governance and sustainability has been recognised by APG Asset Management, in appointing former global chief executive of ING Investment Management, Europe, Angelien Kemna, as successor to chief investment officer Roderick Munsters, the man who has sat at the helm of two of the Netherlands’ biggest pension funds.

Kemna joins All Pensions Group (APG), the fund manager responsible for managing the 205 billion portfolio of Dutch civil servants pension fund ABP, at the beginning of November.

She takes over from Munsters, who was CIO of Dutch healthcare employees’ pension fund PGGM for eight years before becoming chairman of the world’s second largest pension fund, ABP, in 2005. Munsters is leaving on September 1 to join Dutch asset manager Robeco as chief executive.

Munsters has been a member of the executive board and CIO of APG since March 2005. He was a member of the board and CIO of PGGM from 1997 to 2005 and prior to that, held a number of portfolio management positions at Interpolis, the last of which was vice president of capital market investments.

Interestingly, Kemna’s roots in the finance industry trace back to the company her predecessor is leaving to join. She began her career as head of research at Iris, the research branch of Rabobank and Robeco.

At Robeco Kemna held several management level positions in investment, culminating in the position of director of investments and account management. In 2001 she moved to ING Investment Management to become the company’s global chief investment officer, and shortly after, she was made CEO of ING Investment Management Europe.

Since 2007, she has been an endowed professor at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. She will retain her chair at the Erasmus School of Economics.

APG chief executive officer, Dick Sluimers, said Kemna had an excellent track record in the financial world.

“Besides, her personal ambitions to serve society are a perfect match with APG’s,” he said. “She shares our views on the place of sustainability and governance in the investment policy of institutional investors, as well as on the collective pension system”s great benefit to society. As APG’s CIO, she aims to be a strong defender of both.”

Meanwhile, APG has reportedly made a strategic investment in alternative energy, allocating about €150 million to companies with green and alternative energy businesses as part of its 3.5 billion Global Top-down Strategies Fund.

The manager has bought a basket of 40 companies worth about 4 per cent of the total fund, and representing a significant exposure to the alternative energy theme, according to Frank Smudde, fund manager at APG.