Senior Dutch pension manager defects to rival

Jos van Gisbergen, a senior fund manager at Mn Services, is due to take up a new position as head of rival Dutch pension fund Syntrus Achmea’s private equity and infrastructure programme on 1 June, according to a spokesman for Mn Services. A spokesman at Syntrus confirmed the move, while van Gisbergen could not be reached for comment.

At Mn Services, van Gisbergen has managed the group’s €3.25 billion allocation to infrastructure and private equity. The group had €65 billion in assets under management as of August last year, according to data collected by sister magazine Private Equity International.

Syntrus Achmea has a much smaller current allocation to infrastructure and private equity, with about €1 billion allocated to the asset classes, a spokesman for the group said. Syntrus plans to increase this allocation significantly, he added. Its overall assets under management total €62 billion, he said.

No single executive currently has responsibility for Syntrus Achmea's infrastructure and private equity portfolio, which is managed by the whole investment team. Control of that portfolio will pass to van Gisbergen once he starts in June, a spokesman at Syntrus said. Syntrus has no plans to make further additions to the team in the immediate future, the spokesman added.

Van Gisbergen joined Mn Services in 2000 from venture capital group Intercapital (which had been subsumed into AlpInvest in 1998). Prior to that, he had worked for three years at a Brussels-based family office where he managed investments in both liquid and illiquid assets.

He began his career at the international practice of Van Dien & Company, Deloitte Haskins & Sells (now PricewaterhouseCoopers), where he spent eight years, six of which in the Caribbean and the United States.