AP4 won three awards at the award ceremony at the IPE Conference & Awards in Vienna on 28 November: Portfolio Construction & Diversification, Public Pension Fund and Long-Term Investment Strategy.
The Fourth Swedish National Pension Fund’s (AP4’s) return for the first half of 2023 was 6.0% after costs. AP4’s fund capital as per 30 June 2023 amounted to SEK 485.6 billion, compared with SEK 460.5 billion at the start of the year. The result for the first half of the year was SEK 27.7 billion. During the same period, a net total of SEK 2.6 billion was paid by AP4 to the pension system.
The Sustainable Investment Awards 2023 named AP4 "Sovereign wealth fund of the year 2023". The award is presented by The Environmental Finance Sustainable Company Awards, which each year recognizes companies in all sectors that are both leading and driving in the work towards a sustainable future.
AP4 has built up a team for fundamental company selection in resource-intensive sectors. The team's work is to identify companies in the sectors that are partly exposed to long-term trends but which are also leaders from a sustainability perspective in each sector.
2022 was a challenging year in the financial markets. In addition to large and rapid changes in real interest rates, pricing in the energy markets was extremely volatile following the outbreak of war in Ukraine – a war in which, on top of all the human suffering, has also radically changed the game rules for the world’s energy supply.
The Council on Ethics of the Swedish AP Funds (AP1, AP2, AP3 and AP4) have organised a group of institutional investors with EUR 6.4 trillion in combined assets under management to collaboratively engage tech giants with the aim to strengthen their management of human rights risks and impacts.
Jenny Gustafsson has been appointed as the new Head of the AP Funds’ Council on Ethics. Jenny joins the Council from AMF and will lead the work of further strengthening the Council and contributing both to value creation in the income pension system and to more sustainable societies. The recruitment is part of the development of the Council.
The AP Funds’ Council on Ethics had a highly active 2022, with more than 3,200 companies being screened for possible violations and incidents. One project that was successfully closed in 2022 centred on child labour in the cocoa sector. A further 16 new dialogues were initiated. In eight proactive projects the focus is on human rights, the climate and corporate governance and 86 reactive company dialogues are ongoing, aimed at addressing and preventing serious accidents and incidents linked to lack of sustainability.
2022 was characterised by financial turbulence with rapidly rising interest rates and sharply falling values for most asset classes. The Fourth Swedish National Pension Fund’s (AP4’s) return for the full year 2022 was SEK -11.9% after costs, and the net result for the year was SEK -62.5 billion. After a net transfer of SEK 4.7 billion to the pension system during the year, fund capital amounted to SEK 460.5 billion at year-end 2022. The portfolio’s CO2 emissions decreased by 3% in 2022, and the CO2 emissions have decreased by 61% since 2010. AP4 takes its responsibility as an owner and served on 46 nomination committees during 2022.