Dutch pension fund PNO Media is in the process of tilting two parts of its alternatives allocation more towards US exposure – private equity and real estate. The move follows a year when a key listed equities mandate suffered from under-exposure to rallying US tech stocks.
As reported by IPE’s sister publication Pensioen Pro today, the €8.1bn multi-sector pension scheme stated in its recently-published 2025 annual report that it aims to double its US private equity exposure over the next few years at the expense of European holdings, and increase its US property weighting to 20% of the real estate portfolio, up from 15%.
While the private equity geographical shift is newly-announced, the real estate strategy change is the continuation of a policy established in 2024, according to the pension fund.
PNO Media said its board decided in 2025 to gradually diversify the private equity strategy further by slightly increasing the allocation to the US.
It said: “This aligns the portfolio more closely with the global market distribution within private equity, where the US market represents a significantly larger share.”
Over the next few years, PNO Media said it would adjust its strategic weighting for private equity – in which it had €470m invested overall at the end of 2025 – to 40% for the US and 60% for Europe, shifting away from the current split of 20% and 80%, respectively.
Meanwhile, the pension fund said the weighting in its €1bn unlisted real estate portfolio to US assets stood at 15% at the end of 2025, compared to 12% to Europe and a 73% weighting to Dutch — largely residential — assets.
“The aim is to move towards a regional allocation of 50% the Netherlands, 30% Europe (excluding the Netherlands), and 20% the US,” it said.
“This makes the portfolio more resilient to regional fluctuations and ensures it remains well-positioned to generate stable and sustainable returns in the real estate market,” the pension fund said.
In increasing its private equity weighting to US assets, Pensioen Pro reported that PNO Media was following the example of Pensioenfonds Vervoer, the scheme for private sector road transport staff, which recently used the same argument to increase its strategic weighting in US equities.
However, other pension funds in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe are scaling back their US investments, or considering doing so, with heightened political and ESG risks cited by some.
PNO Media’s annual report also revealed the pension fund fired an unnamed external asset manager last November due to underperformance - which was in part due to under-exposure to large US technology stocks in a period when their share prices made gains.
