EUROPE - Peter Scherkamp, the former head of finance strategy at the Siemens pension fund, has returned to the pensions advisory business.

“The time is now right to look into the question of a European pension fund vehicle,” says Scherkamp, who has re-established a Luxembourg advisory company he set up in 1997.

“I had set up Scherkamp & Partner then with a focus on European pensions,” he says. In association with another consultant, Jonathan Heller, he had opened up a niche practice focusing on the role of pooling vehicles.

Looking back he says he was probably too early then for such an initiative. The company will provide what he terms as ‘pensioneering’ services. “This is reminiscent of the type of work I did at Siemens where we engineered the pension area.”

Although he is running his own company, Scherkamp stresses that he is not a one-man band. He is building up a network of like-minded firms and specialists. “The network is constructed along the pensions value chain. You start from design to evaluation, to governance, to ALM, to tactics and overlay strategies.”

The other firms he will work with include Heller & Associates in London, Protinus in Munich - an ALM expert team based around Thomas Bauerfeind - and several more. “The aim is to take a holistic view of pensions.”

Scherkamp has worked at the investment banking side of J P Morgan in Germany and subsequently with the UBS KAG. “Here I acquired and implemented the Deutsche Postbank project, helping them set up their investment activities in Luxembourg which was courageous for a state owned bank at that time.” He also managed the UBS subsidiary in Luxembourg including private banking and investment funds.

He left UBS to set up his advisory company before moving
across to the corporate side joining Siemens. The firm’s website is www.scherkamp.net.

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