AP4 adds to alternatives team to push ‘ambitious alternatives agenda’

Sweden’s AP4 has added a private-equity specialist to its alternatives team in the latest hiring designed to expand the buffer fund’s in-house capabilities as new possibilities open up following changes to its mandate.

AP4 – one of the four main national pensions funds backing the Swedish state pension – announced the appointment of Hanna Ideström as alternatives portfolio manager.

A spokeswoman for the Stockholm-based fund, said: “This is a newly-created position, expanding the alternative investments team further after several new hires in the last couple of years.

“AP4 has an ambitious agenda to increase its exposure to alternative Investments, including private equity, over the coming years,” she said.

This adoption of this aim was a result of the new AP Funds Act, she said.

“Hanna’s previous experience from private equity supports this agenda and strengthens the existing team within alternative investments further,” the spokeswoman said.

Ideström, who began work at AP4 on 9 January, has a background in mergers and acquisitions, and direct investments in private equity, the pension fund said, having started her career at investment bank Greenhill in London in 2008.

Two years later, she moved back to Stockholm where she worked in the buyout team of Finnish private equity fund manager CapMan, focusing on the Nordic mid-cap segment.

She then left in December 2018 to start up a VC impact fund focusing on Sweden and Finland.

According to Ideström’s LinkedIn profile, the fund was called Vault Impact, but fundraising is no longer active.

On 1 May, a second set of changes to the mandate for the big four buffer funds – AP1, AP2, AP3 and AP4 – are scheduled to come into force, which aim to increase the funds’ ability to invest in illiquid assets and increase cost efficiency.

Over the last few years AP4 chief executive officer Niklas Ekvall has been one of the more vocal advocates of reforming the mandate in order to allow the funds to invest more in alternatives.

In November, responding to the proposal’s passage to the Law Commission, he said the changes were steps in the right direction to give the AP funds investment rules that were comparable to other international investors.

But he also said the amendments to the mandate were not as far-reaching as the Fourth AP Fund had recommended.