Carina Akerstrom
The new chair of Alecta, Sweden's biggest pension fund, said that the company is making its way out of a "serious crisis of confidence" after struggling with investments that "probably shouldn't have been made."
Carina Akerstrom, the former chief executive officer of Svenska Handelsbanken, spoke at an extraordinary meeting of the fund's supervisory board in Stockholm on Feb. 22, after being elected to the top job.
"My assessment is that the board and CEO have implemented the measures that are required to start rebuilding trust," Akerstrom said. She added that this had been "painstaking and methodical work, but all to get us out of the crisis."
Alecta, which oversees 1.2 trillion kronor ($116 billion) of retirement savings for a quarter of Sweden's population, came under the spotlight a year ago for its risky investments, including in now-defunct Silicon Valley Bank in the U.S. The fund's failed bets, amounting to about $2 billion in losses, forced out a number of top executives and even prompted an investigation by the country's financial authorities.
That, however, wasn't the end of Alecta's troubles. Attention then shifted to management's enormous bet on heavily-indebted landlord Heimstaden Bostad. Alecta spent $4.6 billion to build a 38% stake in the company, which is now scrambling to offload properties amid credit-rating downgrades and a steep jump in borrowing costs.
Among the challenges Akerstrom will have to deal with are meeting the funding needs of Heimstaden Bostad, and renegotiating a disadvantageous shareholder agreement with the company's co-owner, Norwegian billionaire Ivar Tollefsen. Alecta's stake in the landlord is currently under investigation by prosecutors, as well as Sweden's financial watchdog.
Akerstrom was picked for the job in January, after the fund abruptly rescinded the nomination of Lars Rohde, the former governor of Denmark's central bank, due to "a conflict of interest." Rohde was about to accept a nomination for a board seat with Nordea Bank, the Nordic region's biggest lender, which also does business in pension procurements. The high-profile reversal has raised questions about whether the fund adequately did its due diligence.
Kenneth Bengtsson, the supervisory board's chairman said Rohde didn't see the conflict of interest based on advice from Nordea's legal experts.
"That might make sense from their point of view as pensions are only a fraction of their business," Bengtsson said in an interview. "But to Alecta, pensions are everything. We can't have a chairman who has to recuse himself every time we discuss a procurement."
The fund has already reshuffled its management and board following the string of scandals. Akerstrom succeeds Jan-Olof Jacke, who took over after Ingrid Bonde stepped down as chairman in October. The current CEO, Peder Hasslev, has been in charge since September after Magnus Billing was ousted in April.
The fund will publish its full-year results next week, including an up-to-date valuation of its holding in privately owned Heimstaden Bostad.
