Dutch pension fund Recreatie was revealed this month to have replaced the world’s largest management firm BlackRock with Mercer-owned Cardano as the manager of its €450m equity portfolio. The mandatory pension fund for the recreation sector said the change of managers had been “a business decision” in which cost considerations had played a major role — but admitted the ESG controversies surrounding BlackRock had not worked in BlackRock’s favour.
BlackRock has drawn criticism from some for its decision to withdraw from various climate-related partnerships.
Last year, the €64bn Dutch pension fund PME ended its relationship with BlackRock, saying its board had been considering whether the US manager aligned with its values and beliefs regarding investing for the future.
At a time when index management has been on the rise, Dutch pension fund Mediahuis NL (Mhpf) has insisted it is keeping the management of most of its equities portfolio active. The €1.2bn pension scheme of the Dutch publishing company behind the newspaper De Telegraaf manages around 95% of its total portfolio actively, which is the highest percentage within a peer group of 162 pension funds.
Pension fund Mediahuis Netherlands (Mhpf) is increasingly looking at market and sector concentrations
The pension fund’s CIO told IPE’s sister publication Pensioen Pro Mhpf remained proponents of active investing - but did admit it was getting harder to beat the benchmark in certain markets, particularly due to high concentration.
In other investment strategy news, the pension fund PNO Media disclosed it is tilting two parts of its alternatives allocation more towards US exposure – private equity and real estate. The multi-sector pension scheme aims to double its US private equity exposure over the next few years at the expense of European holdings, and - continuing a policy established in 2024 - increase its US property weighting to 20% of the real estate portfolio, up from 15%.
Diversifying private equity by slightly increasing the US allocation aligned the portfolio more closely with the global market distribution within private equity, where the US market represented a much larger share, PNO Media said.
Items to note:
- Peter Ferket, member of the board and investment committee of PFZW, and Alae Laghrich, chair of Dutch pension fund PME, have been confirmed as speakers at the Investors’ Summit event hosted by IPE’s sister publication Pensioen Pro in Rotterdam on 6 October.
- Two top Dutch pensions experts have concluded the government’s idea of making pension saving mandatory for all workers is feasible, but in their paper, Casper van Ewijk, professor of economics and researcher at Network for Studies on Pensions, Ageing and Retirement (Netspar), and Erik Lutjens, professor of pensions law at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, also warned “important design choices have to be made”.
Rachel Fixsen
Nordic and Netherlands Correspondent
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