A German pension fund whose foray into private markets led to more than €1 billion in losses has questioned the integrity of the ratings it used, adding to growing warnings over valuation risks across the booming asset class.
“Almost all” of the fund’s €739 million in loans at the end of last year had a BBB- rating, said Thomas Schieritz, who heads the pension fund known by its German acronym VZB. Schieritz, who took over earlier this year, in an interview described the concentration of credit ratings into a single category as “statistically completely improbable.”
