DENMARK - Janus Capital Group says it has been registered as the largest fund provider on Denmark's new DKK43bn (€5.8bn) Folkebørsen investment platform.

Other providers on the platform include names such as Alfred Berg, Baring, Carnegie, Credit Suisse, Dexia, JP Morgan, Jyske, Morgan Stanley, Nykredit, Pimco, Schroder, SEB and UBS. The platform launches at the start of 2005 and will be Denmark-s largest unit-linked scheme.

The idea is that account holders will be able to invest their savings in collective investment schemes via an Internet portal.

Each collective investment scheme corresponds to investment in units in a certain investment undertaking. It is up to the investment undertakings to decide whether to join the scheme.

Janus said: "With assets of more than DKK43bn (€5.8bn) the new platform will allow Danish investors, under the Danish government-sponsored Special Pensions Savings Scheme (Særlig Pensionopsparing), to choose from a range of approximately 200 Danish and foreign funds, including an initial 12 Janus World Funds."

The Special Pensions Savings Scheme forms part of the Danish statutory pension schemes. Assets under the scheme are currently managed by the Danish Labour Market Supplementary Pension Scheme ATP.

"With our broad range of equity and fixed income funds, Danish investors now have more options to meet their financial goals from one of the US's largest fund providers," said Henrik Rox Hansen, the firm's regional director for northern Europe.

"We see great potential for our funds in Denmark as investors look for greater exposure to global and US markets," Rox Hansen added. "The US market, representing half the world's stock market capitalization, is too big for Danish investors to ignore."

ATP has also set up a service to rate the different funds called atpRating, based on work by Copenhagen Business School.

“The statutory framework for freedom of choice in the Special Pension Savings Scheme (SP requires that investors are ensured adequate, detailed and comparable information on member investment funds, including information on costs and returns,” said ATP’s Nikolaj Holdt Mikkelsen.

As of 1 January 2005, individual SP account holders will have three options: let ATP invest the SP capital as previously; invest the capital in various collective investment schemes or transfer the SP account to another pension fund.

ATP will continue to be in charge of managing the SP accounts for the account holders who choose not to transfer their SP accounts to another pension fund. ATP has outsourced communication with the investment funds to the Copenhagen Stock Exchange.