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Investor Profile

Diversification key for pioneer of fiduciary management

For someone whose ideas have revolutionised the Dutch pension industry and carried significant international clout, Anton van Nunen strikes a humble tone. Widely credited with pioneering fiduciary management from its infancy, Van Nunen confesses with a chuckle that it is “quite a surprise” that the concept has grown to win over a significant proportion of […]
Dan BillinghamMay 22, 2013
Investor Profile

Autumnal Danish fund shows spring growth

Innovation is associated more with bold new businesses than gently declining ones, but Denmark’s Lønmodtagernes Dyrtidsfond (LD) is embracing change as it enters its final years. The pension fund’s inevitable disappearance has nothing to do with any lack of competitiveness or poor investment returns – the 9.9-per-cent net return it generated in 2012 is testament […]
Dan BillinghamApril 10, 2013
Investor Profile

Mid-life crisis at West Midlands Pension Fund

The area surrounding the British city of Wolverhampton, near Birmingham, is still called the Black Country although the polluting coal mines and steel mills that sprung up during England’s nineteenth-century explosion of wealth have long gone. Today there is little evidence that Wolverhampton was the cradle of an industrial revolution and the 300-odd public sector […]
Sarah RundellApril 3, 2013
Investor Profile

Danica maneuvers towards infrastructure

Danish pension provider Danica is upping the alternatives portion in its roughly $57-billion portfolio as it looks to boost returns within the country’s strict solvency framework. Alternatives already make up over 4 per cent of the $33-billion Traditional Fund, Danica’s largest and most conventional pension pool, double the proportion the asset class took at the […]
Dan BillinghamFebruary 22, 2013
Investor Profile

The Pension Protection Fund: lifeboat in a storm

Crisis in the global economy may be knocking the value of most UK pension funds off course, but it is actually helping swell assets at the £12-billion ($19-billion) Pension Protection Fund (PPF). Established in 2005 along similar lines to America’s giant Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the PPF absorbs the assets of defined-benefit private sector schemes […]
Sarah RundellJanuary 23, 2013
Investor Profile

Illiquid medicine brings rude health to the Wellcome Trust

Sir Henry Wellcome, the early twentieth century pharmaceuticals magnate (pictured below), would be pleased with how well the London-based charitable foundation that bears his name has weathered the global downturn. The Wellcome Trust (WT), which supports medical research in Britain and around the world, reported a total return of 12 per cent for the year […]
Richard TomlinsonJanuary 18, 2013
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