Stockholm based Carlson Investment Management has won a mandate to run an SKr200m (€21m) Swedish equities portfolio for the so called G7-Group, a collaboration of seven southern Swedish municipality pension funds.
It is the second time that the municipalities, Burlöv, Kävlinge, Lomma, Markaryd, Svedala, Vellinge and Örkelljunga, have got together to invest their pension assets, worth SKr1bn collectively, says Ingrid Sjöstedt of the Lomma commune. “We found that our debts outweighed the pension assets at our disposal, so decided to join up, invest them and hopefully make them grow,” she comments.
The pension assets concerned are available to pensioners who had paid into the various municipal schemes until 1997. The assets are split between six managers and between equities and bonds.
Länsförsäkringar WASA Kapitalförvaltning and Carnegie Kapitalförvaltning take care of the fixed income element, which is all Swedish and accounts for half the fund’s assets.
Carlson Investment Management and E Öhman J:or Kapitalförvaltning manage the Swedish equities contingent, which makes up 25% of the fund’s assets, whilst Fidelity Investments and Dresdner RCM Global Investors invest the remaining 25% in overseas equities.
Sjöstedt says that the current set-up will continue until 2004 when an investment review will take place. There are no consultants involved, as the investment decisions and review are all carried out in-house.
Carlson has also won two new local authority pension fund mandates worth SKr160m.
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.
The mandates are both global balanced, and are split out at SKr120m from Borlänge and SKr 40m from Säter.
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.”
Borlänge says it was also keen to find an investment manager that complied with its socially responsible investment (SRI) strategy.
Says a spokesperson for Borlänge: “Carlson is one of the few managers that can deliver investment services that comply with our extensive SRI policy.”