Diary of An Investor
To be charitable
01 Feb 2012
It is a windy morning at the end of January and I am driving to a conference in Amsterdam. I am asked to speak by a group of Dutch community groups and charities. Bart, an old friend and former...
Sinterklaas
03 Jan 2012
Before Christmas, we at Wasserdicht Pension Funds took a call from a research company. They were visiting Dutch pension funds, they said, to carry out a study of attitudes among institutional...
Investment detour
01 Dec 2011
This autumn, we at Wasserdicht Pension Funds in the Netherlands are touring some of our factories around the country to talk to members and pensioners about the pension fund. We are a multinational...
Plain talking
01 Nov 2011
This week I read about a new initiative calling itself the 300 Club.
No Greek tragedy
01 Oct 2011
Well, things didn’t get much better in the markets after our long family drive back from the Italian Riviera to The Hague in August – volatility continued on the markets and it became clear that when ...
Pieter’s Italian job
01 Sep 2011
The best thing about August is holidays – this year two weeks by the beach in on the Italian Riviera with my wife and children. Italy is the best for family holidays; everything is to hand. Life is...
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
01 Jul 2011
We Dutch value consensus – perhaps we even need it in the way we need our dikes and polders to manage our low-lying lands. That may even be the reason we call our framework of social partnership the...
Keeping it real
01 Jun 2011
I’m on my way to Brussels for a meeting. Since my car is in the garage for its annual service I decide to take the train. In the old days it used to take three hours from Amsterdam to Brussels but,...
Define risk, please
01 May 2011
Off to talk to the chairman of the pension fund board. ‘Well Pieter, many members are still phoning the administration helpline to ask about investment policy. The recent television programme that...
Whisky and cigarettes
01 Apr 2011
It was a good year for Wasserdicht Pension Funds. The 2010 return for our Dutch scheme was 7.9% and although we experienced a wobble in our coverage ratio over the summer, thanks to interest rates,...
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