Denmark’s AP Pension, the DKK103bn (€13.8bn) mutually owned pensions provider, is expanding its investment team for alternatives to meet greater staffing needs for its current property investment activity, as well as future plans.

The pension fund is searching for someone to fill the newly created role of senior portfolio manager for alternatives.

Peter Olsson, previously AP Pension’s head of property investments, has now been promoted to the position of managing director of the pension fund’s property unit, AP Ejendomme, the pension fund said.

Søren Dal Thomsen, chief executive of AP Pension, told IPE: “At AP Ejendomme, there are now a lot of projects either running or about to run, and therefore we need more hands.

“We are involved in construction projects worth more than €250m, and the possible pipeline is of the same size.”

Most of this current real estate investment is in the residential sector, located mainly in Copenhagen and Aarhus.

“The key focus for the alternative strategy is to be close to the investment,” Dal Thomsen said.

“With the current activity, and the future plan, we simply need more hands.”

AP Pension said its strategy was to increase its investments in alternative investments – credit, real assets, private equities and opportunistic investments – over the coming year.

In the job advertisement, the fund said it believed that, to implement this strategy successfully, it needed to be an active owner of these investments.

For this reason, it said, it wants to increase resources in this area.

AP Pension has also taken on a new CIO in the last few months.

Ralf Magnussen was appointed by the pension fund at the beginning of September to become CIO, replacing Erik Hallarth, who had been hired by PFA Pension to become its chief portfolio manager.

Magnussen came to AP Pension from Lægernes Pensionskasse, the Danish doctors’ pension fund.

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