Denmark’s Industriens Pension says a positive 17.9% return on its infrastructure assets in 2022 – which make up just over 11% of its portfolio – helped to reduce losses suffered elsewhere in its portfolio, and reported a negative full-year return result of 6.5%.
Laila Mortensen, chief executive officer of Industriens Pension, said: “We are, of course, very sorry about a year with a negative return, even though we have one of the smallest losses in the industry.”
The pension fund for industrial sector workers said in a statement that it had, however, delivered either the best or second-best result in the industry for its customers across all age groups, according to an analysis by independent adviser Nikolaj Holdt Mikkelsen, in what it described as a “stormy and unusual year” in the financial markets, with both equities and bonds falling in value significantly.
Industriens Pension said it did well with infrastructure overall in 2022 because renewable- energy infrastructure assets had risen in value during the year, but it did post losses on other unlisted investments, with real estate and private equity losing 6.9% and 4.5%, respectively.
The Copenhagen-based pension fund reported that, of the asset classes, foreign listed equities had performed the worst at -17%. Its domestic listed equites performing better at -10.6%.
All types of bonds suffered heavy losses, with nominal Gilt-edged bonds, emerging market bonds, high-yield bonds and investment-grade bonds recording negative return figures of -12.9%, -14.2% and -12.2% and -16.9%, respectively.
Earlier this month, Industriens Pension announced it would increase its initial DKK70m (€9.4m) investment in US venture capital fund Capital Select, which specialised in green technology firms, following good experiences with the external manager.
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