The board of Sweden’s biggest pension fund, Alecta, has instructed its chief executive officer to immediately initiate an investigation into its $2.1 billion bet on three niche banks tied to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
(Bloomberg) — The board of Sweden’s biggest pension fund, Alecta, has instructed its chief executive officer to immediately initiate an investigation into its $2.1 billion bet on three niche banks tied to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.
Alecta’s CEO Magnus Billing called the investments “a big failure” after admitting the fund would probably write off its entire holdings in SVB and Signature Bank at a cost of about $1.1 billion. That figure looks set to rise further given the pension group also invested $915 million in troubled lender First Republic Bank.
“Another American bank that Alecta invested in has fallen sharply in value,” Alecta said in a statement on Thursday. “There is a risk that this investment will also be completely lost.”
The investigation will focus on whether the “current investment strategy, risk allocation and mandate for asset management are optimal,” Alecta said. The fund will use external resources to conduct the probe and make the findings public.
Read More: Alecta CEO Calls $2 Billion US Bank Foray ‘a Big Failure’
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