SWEDEN – Carlson Investment Management, has won two new local authority pension fund mandates worth SEK160m.

The two communes, Borlänge, a new client for Carlson and Säter, an existing client, chose Carlson following a joint tender process in conjunction with Stockholm-based consultant, Wassum.
The combined assets result from the sale of an energy plant and from the two communes’ only pension assets.

Says Orjan Nordmark at Säter Kommun: “We decided it would be best to have this money invested to make returns, enabling us to start paying pensions as and when necessary. As we at Säter had used Carlson before, we saw no reason to get another manager in.”

The mandates are both global balanced, and are split out at SEK120m from Borlänge and SEK40m from Säter.

Borlänge says it was also keen to find an investment manager that complied with its socially responsible investment (SRI) strategy.
Says a spokesperson for Borläng: “Carlson is one of the few managers that can deliver investment services that comply with our extensive SRI policy.”

The win comes a week after Carlson was chosen to run an SKr 200m Swedish equities portfolio for the pension fund of so called G7-Group, a collaboration of seven southern Swedish communes.
The Skandia-owned firm now manages a total of SEK5bn in pension assets for 50 Swedish communes.