Speakers at Seminar 'How to position your portfolio for 2024 and beyond'

Christophe Fritsch is Global Head of Alternative Credit at AXA IM Alts and member of the AXA IM Alts Management Board. As head of the Alternative Credit business, he oversees the Portfolio Management of a performing and diversified range of alternative assets, covering the entire risk/return spectrum. Before this role, he was Head of Fund Management at AXA IM Alts’ Structured Finance Department since 2014. He was one of the founding members who contributed to the development of the Structured Finance platform (renamed Alternative Credit platform in 2022). Fritsch joined AXA IM in 2000. He graduated from ENSAE with a major in Stochastic Modelling, Statistics, Finance and Actuarial Science.

Jacqueline van den Ende is co-founder and CEO of Carbon Equity, a European climate venture capital and private equity fund investing platform. She has an extensive background as a private equity investor, venture capital partner and serial entrepreneur. She was a partner at Peak, a private equity investor at HAL Investments and was involved in building several companies, including De Kleine Consultant, online real estate marketplace Lamudi in South East Asia and fintech scale up TrueMoney. Van den Ende received an MSc in International Economics and Business from the Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Koen Ronda is Head of Private Markets Investments bij IBS Capital Management. Hij is verantwoordelijk voor de private markets investments van IBS Fund Management, onderdeel van IBS Capital Allies. Op het IBS Private Markets Platform wordt cliënten via IBS fund of funds exposure gegeven tot institutionele investeringen en managers binnen private equity, private debt en infrastructure assets. IBS doet dit via fondsinvesteringen en directe co-investments in samenwerking met private equity managers. Eerder was Ronda bij IBS Portfolio Manager bij het beursgenoteerde team.

Luc Aben has been working in the field of asset management and asset advice in the Netherlands and Belgium since 1992, including 23 years at Van Lanschot Kempen. He started his career as an Equity Analyst, gradually moving towards macroeconomics and investment strategy. Since 2012 he is Chief Economist of Van Lanschot Kempen. In this role he is co-responsible for allocation choices in asset management and investment advice. He also provides economic input for steering the bank's own balance sheet.

Niels Las is an Associate Director in the Credit and Insurance Linked Investments team at PGGM. The team focuses on both credit risk sharing investments, where it takes first-loss positions in synthetic securitisations of bank loans, and on investments through which it participates in natural catastrophe risk. Previously, Las was involved in setting up the impact-focused allocation within PGGM’s Private Equity team. He holds a Master’s degree in Cognitive Neuroscience from Radboud University Nijmegen and is a CFA charterholder.

Richard Damming heads Schroders Capital Private Equity Investment activities in Europe across direct/co-investments, primaries and secondaries. He is also on the advisory board of several leading European fund managers. Before joining Schroders in 2011, Richard worked at Capvent AG, a Zurich based private equity fund of funds firm. From 2006 to 2009, he was an Associate in the Corporate Finance team of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Zurich. He was also a controller and corporate M&A Analyst for ABB Ltd. from 2004 to 2005. Damming holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration with a specialization in Corporate Finance from Bocconi University Milan, Italy.

Roy Kroon joined PGB Pension Services in 2015 as Manager of the internal Fixed Income & Treasury team. Since 2023 he is responsible for the internally and externally managed credit- and Alternative Fixed Income portfolios. Prior to 2015, he was a Portfolio Manager Credits at MN and Credit Analyst with ABN Amro Asset Management. Kroon holds a master degree in Economics from the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam.

Thomas Heidstra is Director Investment at the Univest Company, Unilever's in-house central investment services company. Heidstra has 20 years of industry experience and started this career at ABN AMRO where he was a junior equity analyst in the Emerging Markets Telecoms team. In 2001, he joined the Pan European Small and Mid Cap team of JPMorgan Cazenove. From 2004-2006 he worked at Rabo Securities as Senior Account manager responsible for UK accounts. In 2006 Heidstra joined Theta Capital. Following the take-over of Theta Capital by Rothschild in 2012, he joined Univest Company in 2012 to restructure the hedge fund investments of various large Unilever pension plants and manage the transition from a pure fund of funds model towards a fully direct investment program. Right now, Heidstra is responsible for the investment team of Univest.