NETHERLANDS - The €10bn pension fund for the Dutch printers and media industry, PGB, has appointed Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) with a €240m Europe (ex UK) quantitative equity mandate.

It is the last of 16 mandates awarded to 12 external managers, Dirk Wieman, chief investment officer at the fund's manager, Grafische Bedrijfsfondsen (GBF), told IPE today.

Since December the fund has contracted out around 90%, or €3.6bn, of its equity portfolio to specialised external managers.

Though the PGB declined to mention which other asset managers have been appointed, Wieman mentioned US-based Intech and Janus Capital Management, as both brought out press releases announcing their appointments last year.

He added that the other assets will remain under GBF.

Paul van Leeuwen, chief executive at GBF, commented that the move "is a very important step in our ambition to realise a consistent level of outperformance for the biggest fund GBF advises."

GSAM's objective is to achieve a consistent outperformance of 1.25% over the pension fund's European equity benchmark, the firm said

"PGB aims at structural outperformance of the benchmark on its equity portfolio, which helps us to keep the pension contributions relatively low," said Wieman in December. "Over time," he commented, "only qualified managers are able to realise extra returns on specific markets."

* On January 5, IPE.Com ran a news story about GSAM winning a further fiduciary management mandate in the Netherlands.  We wish to point out that care insurer SBZ has not announced any appointment as yet and that the story was published as a result of a misunderstanding on our part. IPE.Com regrets this and apologises to all parties concerned.

Topics