Allianz lures PGGM private markets pro

Allianz Global Investors has hired private markets specialist Ewoud van de Sande from PGGM to strengthen its offering in the Netherlands.

Van de Sande, who previously spent eight years running private equity funds of funds and separate accounts at Robeco in Rotterdam, has been at PGGM, which manages assets for five different Dutch pension funds, since 2013.

As a senior strategist at PGGM – which has €200 billion under management according to Infrastructure Investor Research & Analytics – van de Sande advised PGGM’s clients on a number of strategic initiatives, including investment policy, asset allocation, sustainability, macro investment conditions and effective benchmarking within private equity, private real estate and infrastructure investments. At Allianz, where he started on Monday this week, he will continue to advise clients on private markets allocations and ESG, sister publication PEI understands.

Van de Sande’s departure from PGGM follows the departure earlier in the year of the asset manager’s influential private markets CIO, Ruulke Bagijn. She left in March to become global head of real assets private equity at AXA Investment Managers – Real Assets, where she is now responsible for private equity and infrastructure investments.

Allianz Global Investors is a diversified investment manager with €454 billion under management for institutional clients. The group’s hire of van de Sande follows the addition of a duo from Lombard Odier: Lodewijk van Pol, former head of fiduciary management, and Chris Wijdenes, former head of treasury, currency and cash management.

The hires “underline once again that the Benelux region – and the Netherlands in particular – are a strategic growth market for AllianzGI,” said Alllianz Global Investors EMEA head Tobias Pross. “We want to grow further in the future.”