ABP 1
ABP is the pension fund for public employees in the governmental and education sectors in the Netherlands. Its assets represent around 35% of total Dutch pension fund assets, and its client base totals some 2.2m participants and retirees. At year-end 1999, ABP’s asset mix consisted of 52% fixed income, 40% equities and 8% real estate. By 2002, the aim is to decrease fixed income in favour of equities, achieving a mix of 50% fixed income, 42% equities and 8% real estate.
Almost 60% of ABP’s assets are invested outside the Netherlands. The focus is on internally managed portfolios and a strong increase in foreign investments. Its head office is in Heerlen, with other offices in Amsterdam and New York.

PGGM 2
PGGM is one of the largest pension schemes in the Netherlands, with 1.5m members at the end of 1999, of whom more than 850,000 are active.
The fund saw its best ever return on assets in 1999, coming in at 22.7% – this was the fifth year in succession in which the fund achieved returns in double figures. Of its total assets under management, 60% were in equities (the sector that achieved the best returns), 26.1% fixed income and 12.1% real estate at year-end 1999. Its funds are managed both internally and externally, but the trend is for increasing in-house management: towards the end of 1999, it brought much of its European portfolio in house. Its strategic alliance with ABP bore fruit during 1999, as the two jointly acquired the Nationale Investeringsbank (NIB), a Dutch investment bank.

ATP 3

Established in 1964, ATP – the Danish Labour Market Supplementary Pension Scheme – is an independent institution that provides supplementary pensions to the state-funded pension. Its members are all wage-earners who work nine or more hours per week, as well as people receiving certain categories of state benefit. With 4.2m members at the end of 1999, it is the largest and most extensive labour market scheme in the country. Employers pay two-thirds of the premium, and individuals pay the balance. The pension is payable from the age of 67, and lump sums are payable to spouses and minor children upon death of the pensioner.
During 1999, it benefited from an overall 10.8% return on investments after tax. In terms of asset allocation, ATP aims for 2000 to continue boosting the equities share of assets under management to 45%, up from 43.5% in 1999, and to continue its process of international diversification.
Up to 20% of its assets can be invested outside of western Europe (including Denmark). It also is considering beefing up its asset management capabilities by making greater use of external fund managers.

State Oil Fund 4
The Norwegian Government Petroleum Fund is virtually a pension fund for the country, based on amassing its oil revenues for future generations and investing them. At the end of last year, assets totalled some $30bn and are likely to increase by at least 50% this year with the sharp rise in oil prices showing through in ever stronger revenues. The assets are managed by Norges Bank Investment Management, a division of the central bank in Oslo. For strategic reasons the fund is invested completely outside Norway, and had a 60% fixed income and 40% in the equity portfolio that until last year was entirely externally managed, but this is changing an an increasing proprtion is now being internally managed. In 1999, the fund had an overall return of 12.4%.

PFA 5
PFA provides pensions to around half the Danish companies that have pension schemes, in addition to representing self-employed people and individuals.
During 1999, its premiums rose by more than 10%, in part due to the fact that it attracted 500 new schemes during the year. It has 316,400 members paying in, 41.200 retired members and 147,300 with premium-free deposits. In addition to its pension business, it offers a range of complementary insurance and investment products. During 1999, the pre-tax return on investment stood at 10.7%. In its equity portfolio, the trend was towards building up an increased holding in non-Danish shares and at the same time reducing Danish equities: around 18% of the investment portfolio is represented by foreign equities, and 15% by domestic equities. Foreign equities gave a particularly positive performance during the year.

AMF 6
The Stockholm-based e18bn AMF-Pension group is an insurance company jointly owned by Sweden’s labour market parties, which formerly exercised a monopoly in the field of blue collar workers’ pensions. The group currently has 1.2m members and 350,000 retirees with a market share of 70% in the blue collar sector.
Since 1998 the group has been in competition in a free market environment and reacted to the end of its monopoly by setting up and marketing a large unit-linked programme.
AMF’s asset allocation breakdown shows roughly 50% in equities both Swedish and international, 45% in fixed-income and 5% in real-estate.
Although AMF-Pension continues to administer blue collar contributions and pension benefits, individual employees may now choose whether to leave their premium reserves with AMF-Pension, transfer them to another insurance group, or place them in unit-linked, UCIT-recognised products.

AVS 7
The Geneva-based Sfr19.8bn (e13bn) liquidity fund of Switzerland’s first pillar pay-as-you-go (PAYG) AVH/AVS regime makes the top 20 of Europe’s pension plans.
The first pillar structure covers the entire Swiss population as well as foreigners that have worked in Switzerland. From a population of 7m, 4.2m contribute to AVH/AVS and there are currently two million beneficiaries.
The fund’s asset allocation breakdown consists for the most part of 72% Swiss bonds and due to the PAYG nature of AVH/AVS as a whole, around 30% of this allocation is in short-term bonds and money market instruments. Of the remainder of the scheme’s assets 20% is in domestic equities and 6% is held in overseas bonds. Real estate accounts for 2% of the fund’s securities.
While there are no foreign shares in the fund’s portfolio, AVH/AVS is looking at the possibility of moving into overseas equities – pending approval by the Swiss government this autumn.

AP Fonden 8, 16, 20
Reform of the Swedish pension laws has marked the beginning of a period of change for the AP Fonden, the Swedish National Pension Fund. Previously the Swedish National Pension Fund was organised into four independent funds with six boards, each with defined investment remits. From 1 May 2000, however, there are four independent and competing funds (the First, Second, Third and Fourth Swedish National Pension Funds), each with its own board.
Each fund will be free to invest across the board, subect to certain restrictions defined by new investment rules that will come into play at the beginning of 2001. Among the new requirements, investments will be permitted in all capital market instruments that are quoted and marketable, but at least 30% of a fund’s assets must be invested in low-risk interest-bearing securities and no more than 40% may be exposed to currency exchange risk. In addition, at least 10% of assets must be managed by an external fund administrator.

Philips Pensioenfonds 9
One of the oldest pension funds in Europe, the Philips Pension Fund is the corporate fund of Dutch company Royal Philips Electronics. At the end of 1999, it had almost 143,000 members, of whom 54,000 were retired. Corporate restructuring at the sponsor company has led to a general increase in passive members over active members during the past several years. In 1999, the fund achieved a total return of 22.3%, outperforming its in-house strategic benchmark by 0.4%. Its investment portfolio consisted of 50.5% equities, 37.5% fixed income and 11% real estate. The equity portfolio had a very strong year, bringing in returns of 51.1%, outperforming its benchmark by 9.7% and making up for lacklustre returns from both real estate and fixed income.

Siemens 10
One of Europe’s largest employer is Germany’s Siemens group has pensions assets worldwide of E20bn. Of this, about 60% relates to domestic pensions. In Germany, the group has recently taken the step of forming a pensions trust to ring-fence its pensions assets from the corporate balance sheet, following in the steps of some other German groups. The assets are internally managed by the Munich-based Siemens KAG investment bank required under German law to run the Spezialfonds holding the assets, which are 60% invested in equities.

Folketrygdfondet 11
The Folketrygdfondet is the Norwegian National Insurance Scheme Fund, established under the 1966 National Insurance Act. its range of investment options is conservatively prescribed. The fund many invest in Norwegian bearer bonds and commercial paper; sight deposits with the Treasury; shares listed on the Oslo stock exchange; listed primary capital certificates in Norwegian savings banks, loan associations and mutual insurance companies; and listed convertible bonds and listed bonds with purchase options on shares in Norwegian companies. Shares and other equity instruments may not exceed 20% of the fund’s total capital, and it may own up to 15% of any one company’s listed equity. In 1999, it achieved a rate of return of 6.6%, slightly down from 1998’s 6.8%.

PKB 12
Switzerland’s largest pension fund, the Bern based Sfr37bn (e24bn) Pensionkasse des Bundes (PKB) for Swiss government employees, began redefining its investment strategy in May 1999 starting a massive programme to exchange government loans into marketable securities.
The fund, which is managed by the federal treasury department, placed a first tranche of Sfr5.4bn into the market in 1999.
The fund guarantees a minimum return rate of 4% for scheme members. However, performance figures above this amount – 5.9% for 1999 – have allowed the fund to increase its mathematic reserves to take into account greater future life expectancy.
Current asset allocation shows 46% in Swiss bonds, 11% in overseas bonds, 17% in Swiss equities and 19% in overseas shares. Five per cent of the fund’s portfolio is in property and 2% in the money markets.
At the end of 1999, the fund had17 mandates and 20 funds managed through external managers with Zurich-based consultant PPC Metrics overseeing the fund structure.
Shell 13
The e14.5bn Hague-based Shell Pensioenfonds Beheer, manager of the assets and administrator for the Dutch pension fund of petroleum multinational Shell, is the Netherlands largest corporate pension fund.
Being large, however, has not prevented the fund from being nimble, as Shell recorded the highest returns of any Dutch scheme last year – corporate or industry-posting returns of 28% against the WM universe average of 16.3%.
The funds asset mix of 65% equities 25% bonds and 10% real estate has a wide geographical diversity – used as an overall risk control technique for its assets.
Non-euro assets make up 61% of the total portfolio – with approximately 29% in the US, 9% in UK and 5% in Japan.
From this non-euro total, 43% of the assets are managed against a fully hedged benchmark in a currency overlay programme.

Bouwnijverheid 14
Bouwnijverheid, the industry-wide scheme for the building industry in the Netherlands, is one of the country’s major pension arrangements, with around 200,000 active members. The E14.8bn fund makes a point of supporting the hands that feeds its members, not only by investing in Dutch real estate but also acting as a property developer. The fund has roughly 45% allocated to fixed income, 30% in equities and 25% in the real estate sector. The scheme believes that it is one of the largest developers in the Netherlands and it has been involved with a number of high-profile projects.

Kanton of Zurich 15
Switzerland’s Sfr19bn (e12.4bn) pension fund for civil servants of the Kanton of Zurich (BVK) closed its defined benefit (DB) scheme and become a defined contribution (DC) plan in January this year.
The move is part of an ongoing project to become an independent legal entity by 2005, which could see the fund move into offering third-party management and investment/ pension services.
The fund has approximately 50,000 active members and 15,000 pensioners,
All current members of the DB scheme will remain in the same fund, with new employees from the year- end offered DC only.
Currently the BVK is part of the directorate of finances at the Canton of Zurich.
Asset allocation breakdown for the plan comes out at around 21.8% in domestic equities, 17.8% in international equities, around 14% in Swiss fixed-income and just under 25% in overseas bonds. The fund holds approximately 10% in property, 6% in cash and a further 6% in mortgage related securities.

Novartis 17
The Novartis International pension scheme based in Basle covers purely the Swiss workforce. With 18,500 of its 33,000 membership now retirees, the fund is maturing. This is partly as a result of the restructuring within the group, with spin-offs tyically resulting in the active members moving with the new organisation and the retired members staying with the group pension scheme, altering the ratio of active to retirees. Pension fund assets at the end of last year amounted to Sfr17.5bn (e11.5bn). The fund is internally managed, apart from some specilaised areas, such as private equity. At year-end, real estate accounted for 12% of assets, equities for 36%, bonds 30% and mortgages 6%, the balance being liquidity and other assets.

BVV 18
Founded in 1909, the BVV is the pension fund for German bank workers and has a total membership of more than 900,000. The fund is managed internally from its head office in Berlin. It takes a generally conservative investment approach, investing around 85% of its assets in fixed income vehicles. Its equities holdings, amounting to around 10% of the total portfolio, are diversified throughout Europe, with small positions in Asia-Pacific and North America.

Local Gov’t Pensions Institution 21
The Helsinki-based e12.5bn Finnish local government pensions institutions (Kuntien Elakevakuutus) covers approximately 340,000 workers in the country’s municipal public sector.
The institution itself runs on a legal pay-as-you-go basis with the fund representing a reserve stockpiled to meet future demographic demand. The assets are invested to the tune of 45% in equity, 49% in fixed-income and the remainder in real estate.
Currently in the middle of a projected benchmark shift in its investments, the fund expects to up its equity exposure in the future.

SPF 22
The NLG24bn (e10.9bn) Utrecht-based SPF Beheer, the management company of the Stichting Spoorwegpensioenfonds railway pension foundation is a non-compulsory sector-wide pension fund.
The plans has approximately 33,000 members and 25,000 pensioners among its 60 affiliated companies in the railway sector.
Portfolio breakdown comes out at just over 50% in equities, 41% in fixed-income and property holdings of 8%.
1999’s total portfolio return came out at a disappointing 15.3%, however, 1.8% below the benchmark of 17.1% – underperformance blamed on a lagging Dutch equity portfolio, poor performance by an external Japanese equity manager and an overall surplus equity weighting.
Significantly, contributions are calculated on the basis of a dynamic generation contribution system, meaning that commitments to the scheme are worked out in advance in light of the necessary returns over a 35-year period.