Pieter Mullen
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What’s on the menu?
As CIO of the Wasserdicht Pension Funds in the Netherlands, I have quite a bit to do with our fund’s boards and committees. I am on the management board of what we now call the ‘investment bureau’ and in that role I have to sit in on many trustee board meetings as an observer and answer questions.
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They want our money
In the Netherlands, our politicians want our money. They’ve got some of it already, in the form of our government bond holdings, and now they want some more.
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Diary of an Investor: It’s all about feeling in control
Our friends at PensionKøbenhavn have been visiting us here in Amsterdam. Last year, our two boards signed a mutual co-operation agreement with our Danish counterparts to start investment joint ventures. More informally, we both hope that we will also benefit from regular sharing of investment knowledge and experiences.
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A day to explain Dutch ambitions
This year we held the annual global strategy meeting of the Wasserdicht Pension Funds in the Netherlands. As this year’s organiser, I suggested a pleasant country house hotel near Hilversum.
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Diary of an Investor: Cold weather, great pay
February is not the time to visit Toronto. Stepping outside the airport I am reminded how seriously cold it gets in Canada. Winters are mostly pretty mild in the Netherlands so we don’t get to skate on frozen canals like in the Old Master paintings.
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Diary of an Investor: Early retirement? No thanks!
One day during our Christmas break, my wife was horrified to read in the daily paper that retirement ages are going up. Jeanette is a French national, even though she has lived most of her life outside of France. ‘There won’t be enough jobs for the young people and the elderly will be forced to work until they drop,’ she said.
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Diary of an Investor: A tale of two funding ratios
Just before Christmas I met my friend Ronald, who is CEO of the pension fund for forklift truck drivers. We meet for a beer one evening after work in our regular haunt in Utrecht. As usual, Ronald is not a happy man, and as usual, it comes down to numbers.
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Diary of an Investor: A tale of two cities
Last week we visited the offices of two asset managers for finals for a European equities mandate. The experiences were instructive.
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Diary of an Investor: Rear-view mirror
A couple of weeks ago I made my way to Amsterdam’s Beurs van Beurlage for a festive evening, the annual dinner of the Dutch Committee of Institutional Investors. It’s always a good occasion to catch up with old friends, even if you’d rather give some of the guests a wide berth.
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Diary of an Investor: Feed the world
It is early September and there’s a chill in the air but the sun is shining. It seems that summer has come late in the Netherlands.
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Diary of an Investor: Dog days
It is the end of August. Holidays are a distant memory, the leaves are wilting on the trees and the children are going back to school. The euro crisis isn’t getting any worse and markets have even rallied. Welcome to the dog days of summer.
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Diary of an Investor: Back to the future
A few weeks ago I phoned an old colleague of mine from years back. Jean-Pierre is from Paris.
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Diary of an Investor: We all agree… but
Everyone agrees about the problems. And everyone agrees that institutional investors need diversified, long-term, risk-managed portfolios to help them meet their liabilities. At least, that is what I concluded after I attended the latest Worldwide Institutional Investing Conference in London last month.
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Diary of an Investor: Retirement questions
Here in the Netherlands we like to hold a special event for our colleagues when they retire. And there is usually something extra special when someone senior takes their pension.
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Diary of an Investor: CIO talk
It is a cold Tuesday morning in March as I land at Copenhagen’s Kastrup Airport on my way to visit Rolf at PensionKøbenhavn, one of Denmark’s most innovative pension funds, to finalise our strategic co-operation in investment matters before board ratificiation. Geert, our recent graduate appointee in the investment department, is with me.
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Diary of an Investor: To be charitable
It is a windy morning at the end of January and I am driving to a conference in Amsterdam.
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Strategy and tactics
The annual strategy meeting of the Wasserdicht pension funds is always an interesting affair. We are meeting at a nice hotel in the area of Frankfurt, with a decent golf course. Helmut from our German Pensionskasse is our host and the chairman of the meeting.
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Diary of an Investor: Sinterklaas
Before Christmas, we at Wasserdicht Pension Funds took a call from a research company. They were visiting Dutch pension funds, they said, to carry out a study of attitudes among institutional investors.
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Diary of an Investor: Investment detour
This autumn, we at Wasserdicht Pension Funds in the Netherlands are touring some of our factories around the country to talk to members and pensioners about the pension fund.
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Diary of an Investor: Plain talking
This week I read about a new initiative calling itself the 300 Club.
