NewsmakersApril 20, 2023

PensionDanmark CEO to Step Down in October

Torben Pedersen, the pension fund’s first employee and CEO, will leave the post after more than 30 years.

Reported by Michael Katz

Torben Pedersen. Photo: Ursula Bach/ PensionDanmark

Torben Möger Pedersen, PensionDanmark’s CEO, will step down October 1 after more than 30 years on the job. He is the only CEO Denmark’s largest labor-market pension fund has ever had.

The 309 billion krone ($45.4 billion) pension fund announced in a release that Pedersen, who is also a member of PensionDanmark’s board of directors, had been in discussions with the board about focusing his work there.

“Torben has worked tirelessly and decisively for PensionDanmark throughout three decades,” Lars Sandahl Sørensen, chairman of PensionDanmark’s board, said in the release. “We agreed that the timing now is right for a new CEO to take charge.”

The pension fund’s board has launched a search for a new CEO and expects to find a successor by the summer.

According to Henning Overgaard, a board member and trade union president at the United Federation of Danish Workers, Pedersen developed PensionDanmark from “a brand new and basic pension fund to a company with a wide range of welfare services.”

According to the pension fund’s annual report, PensionDanmark is owned by 10 trade unions and 15 employer organizations, which are represented on PensionDanmark’s 18-member board of directors.

“Having taken part in the foundation of PensionDanmark, becoming the first employee and the CEO for more than 30 years, I have decided to pass on the baton,” Pedersen said. “As of October 1st, I will spend my time on board work, advisory tasks, my family and other private priorities.”