NETHERLANDS – Dutch healthcare pension fund PGGM has invested €500m in a technology, media and telecoms fund linked with Big Brother TV magnate John de Mol.

Cyrte Investments said the €70bn PGGM had committed the sum to its new TMT Fund, which was launched last month.

Naarden based Cyrte was launched in 2000 to manage the wealth of de Mol’s, one of the founders of TV firm Endemol.

It said the new fund invests across the world in both listed and non-listed companies within the TMT sector.

It added: “The fund, which is open exclusively to professional investors, has a planned size of €1bn-1.5 bn.”

“Cyrte Investments has an attractive and unique investment philosophy and is therefore a valuable partner,” said PGGM portfolio management director Piet Roelandt in a Cyrte release.

“This move is entirely in line with our investment category ‘portfolio of strategies, which we launched last year. This portfolio focuses on investment strategies which realise a structural return on a basis other than that of the traditional pension fund method of ‘buy and hold’.”

“This gets our TMT Fund off to a flying start, Cyrte director Frank Botman. “It is fantastic that PGGM, one of the largest pension funds in the world, has enough confidence in us to enter into a strategic alliance with Cyrte.

“I consider this to be very positive support for the investment strategy we have developed internally.”

Last week PGGM signed a contract to use investment management software from Denmark’s SimCorp.

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