Unilever makes money market fund allocation

The Unilever pension fund, Progress, based in the Netherlands has allocated €200 million to a AAA liquid euro money market fund as a long-term investment.

The money market fund is run by ING Investment Management and Progress CIO Martin Sanders said the fund has picked for its transparency and approach to risk management. He commented: “Investments are spread across transparent, plain vanilla products in which risk management plays a central role. With such a defensive approach, the team has managed to chalk up a good relative performance (after costs) over the past five years.”

ING IM chief marketing and sales officer André van den Heuvel said: “There is currently a clear market shift towards more conservative AAA money market funds – like our money market fund as an alternative to cash management. After all, treasury bonds from many euro countries and deposits at previously trusted banks are no longer considered risk free. We expect this trend to continue for a while.”