The Pension Superfund announces ALM committee; High-profile membership includes Martin Gilbert and Chris Hitchen
The Pension Superfund has announced the makeup of its asset and liability management (ALM) committee – unveiling names including Aberdeen Standard Investments chairman Martin Gilbert and former Railpen chief executive Chris Hitchen as part of its team.
The superfund said the committee will provide strategic and operational recommendations to its joint investment committee as part of the its governance procedures.
The following people will join The Pension Superfund managing partners Edmund Truell and Luke Webster on the committee:
- Wolf Becke - Becke was the chief executive of Hannover Life Re and a board member of Hannover Re Group. He is currently chairman of Aegon Blue Square Re, vice-chairman of FWU and a senior independent director at Vitality Life.
- Ian Edward - Edward is a former investment banker and serial entrepreneur and private equity investor across a variety of sectors including financial services, food & leisure. He is currently non-executive director of Pizza Pilgrims and co-founder of Hippo Inns.
- Martin Gilbert - Gilbert was the co-founder and long-time chief executive of Aberdeen Asset Management, the business that merged with Standard Life in 2017. He is currently chairman of Aberdeen Standard Investments.
- Chris Hitchen - Hitchen is currently chairman of the £43bn Borders to Coast local authority pension pool and non-executive director of Nest. He is the former chief executive of Railpen and a past chairman of the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association.
- William Maltby - Maltby is the former vice-chair of investment banking at Deutsche Bank having headed up the firm's European leveraged finance & financial sponsors group. He is currently chairman of NB Private Equity and Ekins Guinness.
- Kari Stadigh - Stadigh is currently vice-chairman at Nokia and was formerly the president and chief executive of Sampo Group, a Nordic insurance group.
The Pension Superfund co-founder Luke Webster said: "We are very fortunate to have such a wide range of investment and pensions expertise on our ALM committee. It means we have access to the very best ideas, experience and advice and is an important aspect of the added value which scheme members joining the superfund will benefit from."
This comes as the superfund said it has received equity backing from Sampo, which is reported by The Times to have provided 10% of the initial capital to a Guernsey-based feeder fund set up to bankroll the project.
The Pension Superfund plans to consolidate UK occupational defined benefit pension funds by accepting regulator-cleared bulk transfers of all pension assets and their various contractual liabilities into an existing HM Revenue & Customs registered and Pension Protection Fund-eligible arrangement, topped up, as necessary, with a final tax-deductible sponsor contribution to satisfy the superfunds self-sufficiency funding basis.
The covenant which the operating sponsor currently provides to the scheme, and its obligation to make future contributions to it, ends and is replaced by an asset-backed covenant supported by third-party investors known as the capital buffer fund. The scheme trustees hand over their responsibilities to the superfund's trustee board.
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