Last autumn, the €26bn Dutch defined benefit (DB) pension fund of Shell announced it would swap Samco, the oil giant’s in-house asset manager, for BlackRock as its fiduciary manager. Meanwhile, Achmea Investment Management won about €25bn in assets on 1 January by acquiring the asset management arm of Blue Sky Group, the asset manager of the three pension funds of airline KLM.
The deals imply a widening gap in terms of assets under management between Achmea IM and BlackRock and other commercial fiduciary managers such as Van Lanschot Kempen and Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM).
Admittedly, Van Lanschot Kempen started last year as manager of pension fund Hagee Stichting (around €600m) and received €2.8bn from the company pension schemes of Wolters Kluwer, Van Lanschot and CRH as fiduciary manager of the pooled pension scheme (APF) Het Nederlandse Pensioenfonds around the turn of this year.
Aegon Asset Management won the fiduciary mandate for the pension fund of the Dutch central bank DNB (€2.2bn) from BlackRock, and Columbia Threadneedle Investments acquired a mandate from dairy industry fund Zuivel (€625m) from BNP Paribas Asset Management.
But these wins are small fish compared to the deals struck by BlackRock and Achmea IM.
Moreover, Achmea IM climbed one spot on the Dutch fiduciary ranking, entering the top three and overtaking MN which relies mostly on two big clients: its majority shareholder PMT and the other metals scheme PME.
MN is, however now preparing to welcome new clients in the future, it announced recently.
APG and PGGM, the fiduciary managers of the Netherlands’ largest funds ABP and PFZW, retain the two top spots.
Consolidation
Meanwhile, further consolidation among Dutch fiduciary managers after the introduction of the new defined contribution (DC) pension system cannot be ruled out, Achmea IM chief executive officer Maureen Schlejen told IPE’s Dutch sister publication Pensioen Pro at the end of November. “Because I see that scale is becoming more and more important,” she said.
So how big should that scale be at a minimum? Blue Sky Group did not consider itself large enough at €25bn, as it had to deal with an increasingly stringent regulatory environment and increased attention for ESG. According to some consultants, €100bn is a minimum scale to survive in the long run.
However, there are not that many potential Dutch takeover candidates left after, several years ago, GSAM had already scooped up NN Investment Partners.
Among the commercial asset managers, Van Lanschot Kempen and Aegon AM could be. And with a little imagination, one could also consider the reorganisation at MN which is currently ongoing as a way of readying the company for sale.
But co-president Terry Troost of major shareholder PMT said in 2023 that further integration of MN with, for example, PGGM at the fiduciary level was not a clear option at the time. MN outsourced its pension administration business to PGGM last year.
This article was first published on Pensioen Pro, IPE’s Dutch sister publication. It was translated and adapted for IPE by Tjibbe Hoekstra
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