Speakers:

Sweder van Wijnbergen is professor of Economics at the University of Amsterdam and founder and former CEO of Infomedics NV, an internet intermediary in the Dutch healthcare sector. He was professor at the London School of Economics until 1997 and Secretary General of the Ministry of Economic Affairs in the Netherlands from 1997 until 2000.
Earlier he worked at the World Bank in Washington DC, where his last position was Chief Economist for Central and Eastern Europe (1989-1993) after working in Mexico during the Brady debt deal and the NAFTA negotiations. He has advised companies and governments in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Latin America on issues ranging from privatisation to macroeconomic policy and tax reform.
He received a master in Physics from Utrecht University (1975) and in Econometrics from Rotterdam University (1977), and received his PhD in Economics (1980) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA. He has published extensively in the areas of international economics and public finance.

Susan Kudzman has been Executive Vice-President, Depositors and Risks at the Caisse since April 2006. Kudzman is responsible for depositors’ accounts management, risk management, reporting, strategic planning and initiatives as well as performance measurement and analysis. In addition, she chairs the Depositors and Risks Committee (DRC) and the DRC-Transactions Committee. Kudzman also sits on the Executive Committee. She joined the Caisse in 2005 as Senior Vice-President, Risk Management and Return. Previously, from 2000 to 2005, Kudzman was Chief Human Resources Officer and Chief Corporate Officer at BCE Emergis. She also worked for more than 15 years as an actuarial consultant for the firms of Towers Perrin and Mercer. Kudzman holds a bachelor’s degree in Actuarial Science from Université Laval. She is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries and of the Society of Actuaries (United States).

Leo de Bever joined the Alberta Investment Management Corporation as CEO in August 2008. Prior to that he was CIO at Victorian Funds Management Corporation, one of Australia’s top public sector pension funds, based in Melbourne, Australia. Leo started his career at the Bank of Canada in Ottawa in 1975, and is perhaps best known for the nearly ten years as senior vice-president of research and economics for the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, with responsibility for long-term investment strategy, risk management, and real return assets. Leo grew up in the Netherlands. He received a B.A. in economics from the University of Oregon, and a PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin.

Marcel Andringa is chief investment officer of SPF Beheer bv since 2008. Before that he was for a considerable time head of investment policy and strategy. He advises customers of SPF Beheer on the investment policy and the execution of this policy. He focuses on ALM studies, risk management, performance measurement and the introduction of new investments categories, like private equity, commodities and the opportunity portfolio. Andringa studied business economy at the state University of Groningen and is active in investment management since 1996. 

Bernard Walschots is chief investment officer of Rabobank Pension fund. Until March 2007, he was Global Head of Financial Markets Research of Rabobank International. In 1984 Walschots graduated as an economist from University of Brabant. From 1985 to early 1988, he worked at the ministry of Finance in The Hague as a policy advisor. In February 1988, he joined Rabobank’s Economic Research Department. In 1991 he moved to the Financial Markets Directorate, the present day Global Financial Markets Division, where he established the Financial markets Research department, with presence in Utrecht and, later on, also in London and Singapore.

Panel members:

Chairman
Jan van de Poel is professor of risk management at the finance department of Maastricht University. He also has a number of committee positions and supervisory board memberships. Previously he was CFO of ABP and Sphinx, as well as professor of accounting in Amsterdam and Maastricht. Between 1997 and 2003, as CFO and a member of the ABP board, Professor Van de Poel was responsible for asset and liability management, risk policy, ICT, financial accounting, actuarial affairs, strategy and auditing. At present he is chairman of the supervisory board of Telematica Instituut, a leading institute in the field of ICT. Previous roles included those of supervisory director at Governance Metrics International (a corporate governance rating agent in New York), as well as membership of the board of Vangnet HBO and the board of governors of the postgraduate ‘Registercontroller’ programmes in Maastricht and Amsterdam. Currently Professor Van de Poel is a supervisory director at Conquaestor (involved in financial management and consulting), an external member of the audit committee of the doctors’ pension fund SPH, a partner in the firm Berk Accountants and chairman of the advisory council of the Actuarial Association.

Daan Heijting is CEO of ING Pension Fund since March 2008. From 2000 till 2008 he worked at Pension Fund PNO Media of which he was a managing director during the last four years. Daan completed the postgraduate program in accountancy at the University of Amsterdam. Formerly he was an accountant at KPMG and the Dutch Tax Authority. His recent publications are mainly on the subject of pension fund governance.

Leo Witkamp is chairman of the board of pension fund PNO Media. He started his career in 1976 at AEGON, where he was involved in company pension funds. In 1987 he started working for a sectoral pension fund as internal actuary. Since 1992 Leo Witkamp is working for PNO Media, the sectoral pension fund for the media. PNO Media has 80 employees and an invested capital of 2.5 billion euro. It takes care of the pensions of 15.000 active participants, working for 375 different companies. Leo Witkamp is also working as Chairman of the Board of PNO Ziektekosten.

Lans Bovenberg obtained his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1984. He started his working career as an economist at the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C (1985-1990), after which he worked at the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs in The Hague. He was deputy director of CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (Centraal Planbureau) and became a professor of economics at Tilburg University in 1998, where he served as scientific director of the Center for economic research (CentER). In 2003, he won the Spinoza prize -- the second Dutch social scientist ever to win this prize. With the prize money, he founded the research network Netspar (Network for Studies on Pensions, Aging and Retirement) in which various pension funds, insurance companies, public agencies and universities participate. He is currently scientific director of Netspar. Bovenberg has published extensively in the leading international journals on a wide variety of topics: public economics, tax policy, environmental economics, institutional economics, pensions and aging, international macroeconomics and labour economics. He is one of the most-cited Dutch economists in the international academic literature. At the same time, he has been the most-cited Dutch economist in policy-oriented journals aimed at practitioners and policymakers for about one and a half decades now. He is an independent member of the Social Economic Council (SER), which is the main advisory body on social-economic policy of the Dutch government.

Guus Boender is professor Asset Liability Management at the Free University Amsterdam and one of the co-founders of ORTEC, a specialist in Asset Liability Management, Risk Management and Performance attribution for pension funds, insurance companies and housing corporations. ORTEC Finance has now over 120 employees and offices in the Netherlands, Switzerland and UK. Boender gained his PhD in Econometrics and Operations research at The Erasmus University Rotterdam and published over 25 articles in leading international journals. Since 2008, he is a member of the Supervisory Board of Aedex.

Theo Kocken is founder and CEO of Cardano. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Business administration, a Master's degree in Econometrics and gained his PhD at the VU University (Amsterdam). Between 1990 and 2000 Kocken expanded his expertise in derivatives and risk management as head of the Market Risk departments at ING and Rabobank International. In 2000 he founded Cardano, a specialist in investment management and risk management and market leader in derivatives overlays. Cardano, with over 70 employees, has offices in London and Rotterdam. Kocken is (co-)author of numerous books and articles in the area of risk management and pension funds. In his book 'Curious Contracts. Pension Fund Redesign for the Future' (2006) he applied modern finance theories as a basis for pension fund redesign.

Sweder van Wijnbergen (see speakers)

Chairmen

Jeroen Tielman is co-founder of the IMQubator fund of fund and since January 2009 CEO of IMQ Investment Management (the management company of www.IMQubator.com). During 2008, Tielman also worked on the establishment of an international pension asset collaboration network together with TIAA-CREF. Previous to this Tielman worked with Cordares as managing director Commerce, Strategy & Innovation from 2006 to 2008. Tielman started his career in 1986 with ABN AMRO as an investment analyst and was an institutional sales advisor with ABN AMRO Securities Inc. in New York. After he returned to Amsterdam he joined the newly established global telecom industry team of the Corporate Finance / M&A department of ABN AMRO Hoare Govett. Between 1996 and 2000 he was global head product development of ABN AMRO Asset Management. Tielman resigned with ABN AMRO in 2000 to found FundPartners as an independent product engineering boutique for the financial sector, particularly the pension industry. PGGM was shareholder and launching customer. NIBC joined as shareholder in 2003 and fully acquired FundPartners in 2005.
Tielman completed his study business administration at the Erasmus University Rotterdam in 1986 and is registered investment analyst (RBA). Since 2002 Tielman organizes the annual PensionSummit as independent discussion platform “for and by pension funds”. From 2002 to 2004 Tielman was member of the jury team of the IPE European DB/DC themed awards and in 2007 he participated in two separate project advisory teams for Holland Financial Centre. In 2008 Tielman was asked to co-organize and co-host the 4th International Longevity Risk and Capital Markets Solutions Conference in co-operation with professor David Blake (Pensions Institute) and Theo Nijman (Netspar) (www.longrisk.com).

Theo Kocken (see panel)