GERMANY - Chemie Pensionsfonds, a sector pension fund targeted at employees of Germany's chemical industry, has reported sharp increases in its assets and number of insured for 2006.

Chemie said its assets rose 66% last year to total €95m.

In terms of the number of insured, the fund also aid the figure rose almost 40% to more than 25,000. The total market potential for Chemie's pension is thought to be 200,000 chemical employees.

"As the results from last year show, the concept of the Chemie Pensionsfonds as a high-return form of retirement saving is catching on," said Heike Pohl, chief executive of the fund.

"We are therefore confident that the fund will play a crucial role in retirement provision within the chemical industry," she added.

Launched in early 2002, Chemie was one of Germany's first Pensionsfonds, or equity-oriented pension vehicles. Although it and other Pensionsfonds had a slow start, the vehicles have caught on since the government improved their competitiveness in 2005.

For 2006, Chemie said it had achieved a return of 9.7% on its assets. This compares with 16.5% for 2005. The average return for the last four years was 11.5%.

Citing a member of Chemie's investment committee, IPE already reported in late October that Chemie would have around €100m in assets by the end of 2006. Chemie currently does all of its own investing.

But Gottlieb Förster, the investment committee member, told IPE in late October that once Chemie accumulated even higher volumes in the future, it would consider using external managers and even a global custodian.

Chemie, along with HVB Pensionsfonds, a multi-employer scheme, are run by HVB, a Munich-based bank. Martin Großmann, Pohl's predecessor at Chemie, previously estimated that HVB's two Pensionsfonds would have €500m in assets by 2010.

Separately, Bayern-Invest, a German provider of so-called ‘master funds', said it had hired Oliver Brandt as a new sales executive in charge of pension funds, firms and insurers. Brandt, 43, joins Bayern-Invest from Union Panagora, a Frankfurt-based asset manager that specialises in quantitative management.

German master funds enable an institutional investor to centralise back-office administration of Spezialfonds - for example reporting and risk monitoring. Claimed benefits for the investor are greater transparency and reduced cost.

Bayern-Invest, which is tied to German Landesbank BayernLB, also said that it expected its assets under management and administration to rise to €25.7bn by the end of 2007 from €22.bn currently.