A judge and a professional board member have been tasked by the Swedish government with the complex job of coordinating the mergers of the county’s AP national pensions funds, as part of the cost-cutting consolidation plan shortly to be written into law.

Eva-Lena Norgren, chief judge and head of authority, Gothenburg District Court, has been appointed as the special investigator for the merger of AP6 into the larger AP2 in Gothenburg, while Niklas Johansson, board professional and adviser, has been appointed special investigator for the Stockholm-based funds – where AP1 is to be wound up and its assets divided between AP3 and AP4, according to an announcement from the finance ministry.

Norgren has previously worked as deputy director and adviser in the ministry’s financial markets and institutions department, and is on the audit committee of the European Investment Bank, while Johansson is a non-executive director of Skandia Life Insurance Company, and a former head of department at the finance ministry.

The ministry said Norgren and Johansson would have coordinating roles in the work of merging the funds, and that because the two reorganisations are meant to be treated equally, the investigators should work in close cooperation with each other.

In their first interim reports, to be submitted on 30 September, the investigators should propose which of the funds’ assets should be managed separately from other assets, it said.

“The fact that certain assets need to be managed separately is due to the fact that it is not possible to transfer them in connection with the reorganisation.

“This may be due, for example, to external managers not allowing a transfer, or that a transfer would create unjustifiably high costs,” the ministry said in its announcement last week.

Norgren and Johansson are to support the funds with other issues as well, such as handling personnel issues, leases and other agreements – as well as proposing how the costs of the reorganisation should be distributed between the funds.

They are also to propose further legislative changes if the need arises during the process, the ministry said.

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Rachel is IPE's Nordic correspondent. She has long been a freelance writer, and over the years, has written for The Telegraph, The Independent, The Observer, AMWatch and elsewhere. In 2001, Rachel's personal finance book Kickstart Your Money was published by John Wiley & Sons.View full Profile

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