NETHERLANDS – The 11.7 billion euro Pensioenfonds Metalektro has appointed Goldman Sachs Asset Management to manage a 750 million euro asset allocation and active currency mandate.

Roland van den Brink, managing director of investments at PME, said that one of the fund’s objectives is to earn 40 basis points net of costs by active management, with an overall tracking error maximum of three per cent.

He added: “Asset allocation is seen as one of the possibilities to achieve this goal. Due to diversification of style the decision was made to have at least one external manager besides the in-house investment team.

“A quick scan of the market and experience from other Dutch pension funds made it clear that only a few managers really are capable of adding value.”

PME was created from the recent merger of the PMI and SVM funds.

Ruud Hendriks, head of institutional sales and marketing for European at GSAM, said: “This is an Asset Allocation and Active Currency Strategy mandate which has a blended structure; partly quantitative driven and partly fundamental driven.” He added that the adoption of blended structure mandates is a trend that it is seeing in the Dutch market.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management is the 11th largest manager of European pension assets, with around 27.8 billion euros of such assets under management.

Last month GSAM was hit when the 10 billion pound (14 billion euro) British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme withdrew 4.8 billion pounds.


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