SWEDEN – AP4, the SEK165bn (€17.6bn) Fourth National Swedish Pension Fund, says its external equities mandates made a negative contribution in the first half.

The fund’s SEK72.4bn global equity portfolio returned 3.3%, 0.2 percentage points above benchmark. But this was driven by the internally managed portfolio, which returned 3.8% - 0.4% above benchmark.

“The external mandates made all in all a negative contribution to the relative return,” AP4, or Fjärde AP-fonden, said in its six-month report. The fund has a total of SEK35.8bn in externally managed active or semi-active mandates.

Sister funds AP1 and AP2 have recently taken more of their assets in-house.

AP4’s total return of 8.3% - compared to 5.5% a year ago – was 0.1 points above benchmark. “The good absolute return, which mainly benefited from a high proportion of Swedish equities in the strategic portfolio and exchange rate development, further strengthened the accumulated surplus,” said president Thomas Halvorsen.

Currency, now managed as a separate asset class, contributed 1.9 points to AP4’s absolute return.

The fund has also tendered for performance and risk analysis solutions.

“The solutions should be able to produce timely reports and analyses of positions, performance, performance attribution and risk for portfolio, benchmark and active positions on a daily basis,” the tender states.

AP4’s net profit rose to SEK12.5bn from SEK7.4bn a year before.