Rail & OV, the pension fund for Dutch public transport workers, and the closed pension scheme of custodian bank Kasbank (now Caceis) have both revised their investment strategies, taking a less active approach versus the benchmark for their listed equities portfolios.
The moves follow several years of underperformance.
A spokesman for Rail & OV said the fund has reduced its allocation to active fundamental management within the equity portfolio in favour of a passive mandate.
“This has been done to reduce the relative risk compared to our benchmark,” he added. The fund also appointed a second external manager for the management of its concentrated equity portfolio to improve diversification.
The Kasbank scheme ditched its “very restrictive” ESG policy, which it blamed for four consecutive years of underperformance. Instead, it has expanded its portfolio from less than a hundred stocks to more than a thousand, said board member Larissa Gabriëlse.
In other major news, IPE learnt that the operations of the €70bn The Hague-based asset manager SamCo, the asset manager of most pension funds of oil and gas major Shell, will be wound down as the fiduciary management of six Shell pension funds will be transferred to Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM).
A third of SAMCo’s employees are to join GSAM, with the rest being made redundant, according to sources. SAMCo’s future had been cast in doubt for some time, after Shell’s Dutch defined-benefit scheme, the firm’s biggest client, switched to BlackRock earlier this year.
Items to note:
- The IPE Real Assets Infrastructure & Natural Capital Global Conference & Awards 2025 is taking place on Tuesday 16 to Wednesday 17 September at the Mainport Hotel in Rotterdam
Tjibbe Hoekstra
IPE Netherlands Correspondent
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