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Dutch pension fund ABP sold Meta and Alphabet as well as Tesla

February 18, 2025
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Photo: Depositphotos.com

The giant Dutch civil service pension fund ABP sold its stakes in Alphabet and Meta in the third quarter of last year, as well as Tesla, the Financieele Dagblad reported on Tuesday.

The companies no longer met ABP’s stricter criteria for responsible entrepreneurship, the paper said, adding that the sale was part of a divestment of some 900 out of 2,000 positions.

The paper bases its claims on an analysis of ABP’s investment strategy. ABP is the biggest pension fund in Europe and one of the biggest in the world with an investment portfolio totalling some €500 billion.

The parent companies of Google, Facebook and WhatsApp, together with Tesla, particularly fail ABP’s criteria for good governance, fund chairman Harmen van Wijnen told the paper in an interview.

ABP, for example, was one of the companies objecting to Tesla’s reward strategy for owner Elon Musk.

Both Tesla and Meta were included on ABP’s “engagement list”, a list of companies with which the fund was in contact to encourage good governance. With Meta, the conversation focused on human rights and corporate ethics, with Tesla the environment and working conditions, the paper said.

ABP has also sold its stakes in pharmaceutical companies Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, halved its portfolio invested in Israeli companies, and ditched Ahold and Philips. Its investments in Unilever and ING have been increased.

The FD said ABP had almost €3 billion invested in Alphabet, €2 billion in Meta and, as reported earlier, €600 million in Tesla. Its investments in Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon increased, maintaining total investment in the “magnificent seven” at around €20 billion.

The decision to sell the companies is unconnected to Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk’s support for Donald Trump, Van Wijnen said. “We are agnostic when it comes to Trump”.

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