Danish pension funds throttles down on insourcing
The insourcing of investments by Danish pension providers has lost a bit of steam.
AMWatch
A part ofWatch Medier
The insourcing of investments by Danish pension providers has lost a bit of steam.
The Church of Sweden Pension Fund, Kyrkans pensionskassa, made two notable new investments within its alternatives portfolio last year. One of them is a microfinance fund at SEB, which supports local entrepreneurs in developing countries.
The largest Danish pension providers own stock worth more than USD 2.4 billion in the world's largest oil companies, according to survey by Danish newspaper.
Following the case of dividend taxes, Danish pension funds JØP and DIP have collaborated to make a watch list including 18 banks. However, it remains unclear what it would take for the pension funds to install real sanctions.
Former ATP CIO Bjarne Graven Larsen's new asset management firm Qblue Capital has major international ambitions: "Others will end up copying us."
Three Swedish state controlled pension funds work together to reduce costs of investments in infrastructure.
Private markets manager Hamilton Lane aims to invest EUR 1.3bn in private equity for Swedish state pension buffer fund.
Swedish state pension fund AP7 has invested in two cannabis companies in a rapidly growing Canadian market. Other AP funds have chosen to exclude cannabis equity for ethical reasons.
Danish pension fund AP Pension has found the profile to lead the newly established social responsibility department in Skandia, a pension provider division purchased by AP in 2018.
Norli Pension has recently appointed a new CEO, and one of his main duties is to lure average interest rate savings away from other pension funds. The purpose is to make operations more effective through economies of scale.
Danica, which is part of The Danske Bank Group, is no longer going to invest in companies that enter new contracts of military supplies export to Saudi-Arabia. This is to support the Danish government’s ban on export.
As Sweden gets to grips with the money laundering scandal battering its oldest bank, questions are being asked about the impartiality of those overseeing the case.
Whereas several pension funds are prepared to allocate billions of kroner in alternative investments, PBU fails to see why they should invest more money in that.
Alongside Skandia, nascent fintech startup Matter Pension provides sustainable pension funds to eco-friendly savers and companies. The founders describe their customers as "modern idealists" and want to show customers how much CO2 they can save by investing in sustainable pension funds.
Finnish pension investors cut down on their allocation to Finland by some 1.3 percent point last year, figures by Finnish Pension Alliance indicate. Real estate pulled the longest straw, but the outcome still was a negative total return of 3.5 percent.
The class action lawsuits against Danske Bank in the wake of the money-laundering scandal is a delicate matter for Danish pension funds. Two of the largest funds will not file for damages. Meanwhile, other pension funds struggle to find their standpoint.
As many years of engagement seemed to lead nowhere, Industriens Pension recently divested securities worth DKK 550m and excluded 109 companies from its investment universe. The pressure from pension savers in favor of a more sustainable investment policy grows year by year, two of the fund's staffers argue.
Schackenfeldt had everything going for him. He had broken from his "social heritage", coming from a broken home, nobody had ambitions on his behalf to ever get an enviable job in the consulting business, a beautiful wife and two small kids. And then the diagnosis came. This is a long-read portrait of CEO Sune Schackenfeldt of Danish pension fund PBU.
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