Denmark’s AkademikerPension says transitioning to its new in-house equity strategy held back returns last year, admitting heavy exposure to domestic pharmaceuticals giant Novo Nordisk and a lack of US dollar hedging were other factors behind its mediocre 2025 returns.
The DKK157bn (€21bn) labour-market pension fund reported a 2025 return of 5.73% for savers with its market-rate AlfaPension product with 15 years to retirement and on a medium-risk profile.
This is below average returns produced by most of the largest Danish pension providers for last year, according to a comparison table compiled by independent consultant Nikolaj Holdt Mikkelsen.
Pædagogernes Pension (PBU), P+ and AP Pension come out as the top performers in Holdt Mikkelsen’s table, at least for medium-risk profiles where savers have 15 years to retirement, with returns of 12.5%, 12.0% and 10.9%, respectively.
Anders Schelde, chief investment officer at AkademikerPension, said of the return: “In absolute terms, this is by no means bad, but we also have to admit it’s weaker than our industry colleagues, who on average seem to end up a good three percentage points higher than this.”
In a commentary published today on the pension fund’s website, Schelde gave three main reasons for the 2025 return, including his organisation’s restructuring of its equity strategy.
“In connection with a major restructuring of the equity strategy, there were increases in the equity market, just as we were in the process of this restructuring,” the pension fund said, citing Schelde.
Novo Nordisk’s price fall and the decline of the US dollar during the course of last year were stated as the other two key factors.
AkademikerPension said it had been more exposed to Novo Nordisk than its peers for many years – an overweight that it said had served it well. “But in 2025 we had to give back some of this gain,” it said.
Regarding the US dollar, the pension fund said: “Here we were not insured against a fall in the price in the same way as several industry colleagues, which affected the return.”
Holdt Mikkelsen said in his commentary on LinkedIn on Danish pension fund performance in 2025 that currency hedging of US stocks had been “clearly the most important driver”.
“Fully hedged, US stocks yielded a return of 15.6%, while the unhedged return ended up at 5.1%,” he said.
At P+, CIO Jasper Riis said his pension fund had been able to produce positive returns in 10 out of the 12 months of last year.
“We have a broad and well-diversified portfolio, and the large risk spread means that we can maintain a relatively high risk level, even when there are fluctuations in the markets,” he said.
“We can therefore conclude that our investment strategy is once again delivering very satisfactory returns to members,” the P+ CIO said.
Meanwhile, Sune Schackenfeldt, chief executive officer of PBU, which also came out as one of the highest-performing Danish pension funds for 2025, said last year had been a strong one for the pension fund for early childhood and education practitioners (pædagoger).
“We have delivered a return of 12.5% and maintained the industry’s lowest costs – despite a year of political unrest and major market fluctuations,” he said.
