The fallout from Silicon Valley Bank has spread to Sweden’s largest pension group after the fund more than doubled its holdings in the Californian bank during the past year.
(Bloomberg) — The fallout from Silicon Valley Bank has spread to Sweden’s largest pension group after the fund more than doubled its holdings in the Californian bank during the past year.
Stockholm-based Alecta, which oversees more than $104 billion in assets, was SVB’s fourth-biggest shareholder at the end of last year with a holding worth $605 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Following a 60% plunge in SVB’s stock on Thursday, the value of the stake was worth only $279 million.
“The holding represents less than 1% of our assets and will not impact our solvency metrics,” said Alecta’s head of communications Jacob Lapidus, who confirmed the pension fund has added to its SVB holding since it became a shareholder in 2019.
The development comes only two days after Alecta told local media that it had offloaded its entire holdings in one of Sweden’s most conservative lenders, Svenska Handelsbanken AB, after 71 years. The pension group’s head of governance and sustainability, Carina Silberg, told newspaper Dagens Industri the group was focusing on American niche banks rather than traditional lenders.
Alecta is the fifth largest shareholder in First Republic Bank, a position it added to toward the end of last year, and the sixth biggest owner in Signature Bank. Both of those banks also suffered steep one-day losses on Thursday.
Read More: SVB Races to Prevent Bank Run as Fund Giants Advise Pulling Cash
–With assistance from Rafaela Lindeberg, Love Liman and Kati Pohjanpalo.
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