Jan-Willem Ruisbroek, managing director of global infrastructure and private natural capital at APG Asset Management, told attendees at the IPE Real Assets Infrastructure & Natural Capital Global Conference & Awards 2025 in Rotterdam this week that investors need not change their investment plan despite geopolitical concerns.
“Don’t panic”, Ruisbroek told investors in an onstage interview with IPE Real Assets editor-in-chief Richard Lowe, stating that being “truly long-term” is the most important consideration.
While it can be tempting to adjust portfolios in response to news headlines, he said, the question is whether “you are really reducing risk by starting to move your portfolio around, or are you creating bigger problems?” APG, he said, has decided to “keep course”.
With €32bn in infrastructure assets under management, APG is aiming to increase its allocation to infrastructure from 6% to 10% in the coming years.
Ruisbroek said investors should look through geopolitical uncertainty and focus on underlying mega-trends. He asked: “Does it change the fact that people in Western societies are getting older and need more social infrastructure? No. Does it change the fact that people are using more megabytes through their phones? No.
“AI is going to be another explosion of data,” he said. “So those mega-trends, if you just hold tight to them… do we see changes to those trends? The answer is no.”
Pension funds urged to take back control
The managing director also called on pension funds – which he called “huge powerhouses” that “just not using their power well” – to take back control of their capital. He argued that outsourcing to external managers prevents them from investing with “strong societal value”.
Ruisbroek urged pension funds to make allocations with a “degree of high impact”, and build bigger, more sophisticated in-house teams to handle the complexity of private market investments rather than shying away. “It’s complex only to an extent,” he said. “It’s all human business.”
Beyond the energy transition, Ruisbroek identified biodiversity loss as a greater threat to humankind. He said that while climate change can be addressed, if species are “killed forever… that will never be restored”.
This threat, he said, is a reason for investors to show conviction. Pension funds should not wait for perfect data to be produced but instead “use common sense” to include biodiversity in their strategic asset allocation, drawing a parallel to the early days of energy transition investing, where conviction preceded the data.
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