DENMARK - Farmakonomer, the €1.06bn pension fund for Danish pharmacists, has been named as the best performing Danish pension and life insurance fund for the second year running.

This result follows a pension and life study of 53 companies and conglomerates with €233.73bn of assets under management conducted by Danish consultancy firm Kirstein Finans.

The study, part of which looks at the yearly investment returns, shows that in 2005 Farmakonomer returned 19.9%, outperforming JØP and Arkitekternes Pensionskasse, the pension fund for architects.

ATP, the €50bn Danish supplementary pension scheme, only just managed to get into the top five - this in comparison to 2004, when it was the second best fund, only outperformed by 0.2% by Farmakonomer.

A surprising performer in 2005 was the €622m Arkitekternes Pensionskasse: in 2004 it only managed to get to the 43rd place.

Also JØP, the Danish pension scheme for lawyers and economists, surprised by rising to 2nd place from number 33.

The worst performers were Alka Liv, PKA+, one of PKA's funds, holding the second worst place, and Skandia Life holding the third worst place.

Elsewhere, the Danish financial regulator Finanstilsynet announced that members of PensionDanmark, the €7.3bn Danish pension fund, received the entire return from their savings.

This in comparison to Danish commercial pension providers, such as Danica Pension and SEB Pension, which use some of the yield to give a return to their shareholders, which is higher than the return given to their members.
 
PensionDanmark could pay out the entire return as it is a non-profit making organisation: it is a mutual and therefore it does not have shareholders.