ATP has named the completed line-up for the external evaluation panel it announced in January, picking two non-Danish academics known for previously having delivered officially-commissioned scrutiny of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund in neighbouring Norway.
The DKK718bn (€96.2bn) Danish labour-market supplementary pension fund announced today that alongside chair Jesper Berg, former director general of the Danish FSA, the three-strong evaluation group would consist of Magnus Dahlquist, professor at the Stockholm School of Economics, and Andrew Ang, former professor at Columbia Business School and until February, head of factors at BlackRock.
Both Dahlquist and Ang have in the past been part of expert groups commissioned by the Norwegian government to conduct external evaluations of aspects of the Government Pension Fund Global’s (GPFG) management.
ATP said: “As previously announced, the evaluation is part of ATP’s ongoing work to ensure that the investment strategy is as effective as possible and a natural follow-up to the adjustments that have been made to the investment strategy in recent years.”
Berg said that with Dahlquist and Ang on board, the panel had two strong and competent people in place to conduct the external evaluation in the wake of the changes ATP had made, adding: “It is an exciting and important task that we are facing.”
“ATP plays a central role in the Danish pension system, and our goal is to conduct an objective and thorough assessment of the investment strategy to ensure that it is robust and future-proof,” said Berg.
The Hillerød-headquartered institution said the evaluation followed international best practices and was partly inspired by the Norwegian SWF, where “similar external evaluations have been conducted”.
ATP said the process would lead to a number of recommendations, expected to be published in the first half of 2026.
Despite changes to ATP’s bond-heavy business model in 2021, which added more market exposure to what remains mainly a guarantee-based product, criticism of the way the mandatory savings are invested has persisted in Denmark.
One such critic, Jesper Rangvid, professor of finance at Copenhagen Business School (CBS), said in January that he was pleased with the evaluation initiative, but that it would have been better if it had been initiated by the government – more at arms-length from the institution itself.
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