| “Overall, we had a strong performance in 2019, despite numerous problems in the geopolitical arena - the trade war between the United States and China, for example, and the threat of a hard Brexit. Our financial situation at the end of 2019 was in fact good enough that we could make a positive decision to grant partial indexation on the pensions in 2020.” Coen Reuvers and Anita Joosten of the Board of Trustees summarised 2019 in these few sentences. And then the coronavirus crisis hit. “The future prospects are now very different, as a result of the enormous shifts on the financial markets and their impact on our investments. For any long-term investor such as Philips Pensioenfonds, situations such as the coronavirus crisis are unavoidable. We have been confronted with financial crises before, and they all share one common factor: at some point the economy will recover. The only question is when that will be. In an interview for our magazine Generaties (in Dutch), members of the Board of Trustees talk at length about the past year and the current developments. |
