NETHERLANDS – Prudential M&G is making a push into the Dutch pensions market, with the appointment of Eduard van Gelderen as director of fixed income.

Van Gelderen was previously chief investment officer at NIB Capital Asset Management, and managing director of fixed income for ABP Investments – the investment arm of Europe’s largest pension fund.

At Prudential M&G, van Gelderen will cover fixed income investments for Dutch clients and will be based in a new office in Rotterdam. He will report to Bernard Abrahamsen, director of fixed income in London, who said that the company’s aim is to “provide institutional clients in the Netherlands with a broader range of investment solutions”.

Van Gelderen believes that the Dutch institutional market is currently “reassessing the concepts of ALM and investment strategy”. Indeed, the move by Dutch pension funds away from equities into fixed income has been noticeable.

According to research by Netherlands-based bank Kempen earlier this year, Dutch pension fund exposure to equities peaked at 50% allocation, but declined last year to nearer 40%. With tough new rules for equity buffers issued by the Dutch pension fund watchdog PVK, the trend to allocating new pensions money into equities will not be maintained at past levels, and market participants believe that the incentive will be to buy fixed income assets instead.

Prudential M&G is the institutional fund management business of the M&G Group and manages 116 billion pounds (166 billion euros) of funds. It specialises in institutional fixed income, pooled pension funds and private finance. It has a 67-strong fixed income team.

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