Pieter Mullen
Investment director at Wasserdicht Pension Funds
FeaturesDiary of an Investor: Making an impact
We at Wasserdicht like to think that our company has a positive impact around the world as a pump and flood protection equipment multinational
FeaturesDiary of an Investor: Imperfect foresight
‘Administration!’ declares Geert, our head of investment research one morning. ‘Not a sexy subject.’
FeaturesDiary of an investor: A free lunch, or two
In common with many others, Wasserdicht’s international pension plans have dispensed with most of their traditional active equity allocations over the years
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Diary of an Investor: Diversity counts
Recently we had to admit that the trustee board of the Wasserdicht Dutch pension fund isn’t very diverse. Of course, we fulfil the requirement to have one female trustee and one under the age of 40 and have for some time
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Diary of an Investor: War stories
Last month I joined our co-operation partners at PensionKøbenhavn in Copenhagen for a private round table of institutional investors discussing real assets
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Diary of an Investor: What chain?
Last year, if anyone had mentioned blockchain my first associations would have been Bitcoin, the dark web and cybercrime. But such new concepts have a habit of shifting shape
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Diary of an Investor: It’s the way you say it
Wasserdicht’s Dutch pension fund is looking to improve the way it communicates with members. Or as Rolf, our chairman of trustees, puts it, the way we talk about bad news
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Diary of an Investor: Greenstreaming, anyone?
Everyone seems to have an opinion about carbon these days, which probably has something to do with the COP21 climate change talks in Paris at the end of last year
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Diary of an Investor: A different world
Last month I was over in London for a short business trip to visit some credit managers. Before I headed back to the airport I meet up with Thijs, a good friend of mine. Thijs recently moved from his role as CIO of one of the large industry funds in the Netherlands to a big corporate pension fund in the UK.
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Diary of an Investor: Independent spirit
My friends at BIG Asset Management are here for one of their regular client visits. At Wasserdicht we don’t do lunches and the format is the traditional Dutch one, with rolls and buttermilk.
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Diary of an Investor: Ten years on
This month I celebrate 10 years as investment director of the Wasserdicht pension funds and it is heartening to receive warm congratulations from so many friends in the Netherlands and abroad.
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Diary of an Investor: How much?
I know that almost everyone thinks they are underpaid. Unfortunately, that group of people includes some members of our team
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Diary of an investor: Smart thinking
Last month I spoke to Katrine, who has taken over as CIO at Pension København, to discuss the co-operation agreement we signed a couple of years ago. When we finished talking about wind farms we discussed risk-and-return sources. Like some of the large Danish pension funds, PensionKøbenhavn has done a lot of work on this subject.
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Diary of an Investor: No magic bullet
The good 2014 return of Wasserdicht’s Dutch fund was less down to asset allocation and mostly driven by high hedge ratios, writes investment director Pieter Mullen
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The solutions business
‘We’re in the solutions business!’ These were the words I was greeted with at the Worldwide Institutional Investing Conference inLondon recently. A fiduciary manager was presenting his vision for pension funds, and all kinds of jargon were thrown out – integral fiduciary management, partial mandate outsourcing, delegated CIOs and segregated diversified growth fund mandates.
