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Stock pension: Minister of Finance Christian Lindner advertises FDP model

2023-01-13T12:32:38.331Z


The share pension is coming - but not in the way the finance minister and his party had called for. Lindner is now emphasizing that a model based on FDP ideas remains the desired “final stage”.


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LIndner and Kenfo boss Mikus (M.): "There are good and bad years"

Photo: IMAGO/Felix Zahn / IMAGO/photothek

In the traffic light struggle for the so-called share pension, Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner still hopes that the original FDP plans will be implemented.

"It's still a social-liberal model," said Lindner at an event in Berlin.

»Maybe someday it will become a liberal-social model.«

The share pension is intended to complement the German pension system, which has so far been financed purely by contributions.

It is a favorite project of the FDP, which campaigned for it in the last federal election campaign.

However, the Liberals had aimed for a provision based on the model in Sweden, where part of the gross wage is required to go into an individual, funded provision.

Such a model with the direct involvement of the contributors is still "the final stage of development, as the Federal Ministry of Finance imagines it," emphasized Lindner.

However, the traffic light could only agree on forming a capital stock of initially ten billion euros for investment in the capital market in the pension insurance.

According to model calculations, this sum should not even come close to suffice to noticeably relieve the pension fund.

A more comprehensive agreement also failed because Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil and his SPD traditionally view stock pensions critically.

Shortly before Lindner's appearance on Friday, it became apparent that the government still does not speak with one voice on the subject.

Then the announcement by Federal Minister of Labor Heil became known that he wanted to create a share reserve as part of a pension reform.

Heil said the same thing as Lindner, but a few hours earlier - which was very carefully noted in the Ministry of Finance.

In Lindner's house, the project is now called »Generational Capital«.

This is to be managed by an independent foundation under public law.

This is initially being advised by the nuclear fund Kenfo, which invests the approximately 24 billion euros paid in by the industry for the costs of radioactive contaminated sites.

The capital is to be invested worldwide in a mixture of active and passive investment strategies, including in equities.

Investment by »absolute professionals«

Lindner asked for confidence in the plans.

"It's not about maximum returns, because that also leads to maximum fluctuations," said the minister.

Investment decisions are placed in the hands of “absolute professionals” so that there is no political influence – “not by politicians on the left, not by politicians on the right”.

The Minister of Finance also spoke out in favor of a legal regulation according to which capital is initially only built up for around 15 years, so that a “significant” three-digit billion amount is then available.

In addition to the basic stock of 10 billion financed through debt, the foundation should also receive company investments from the state in the medium term - Lindner spoke of "soft privatization" in this context.

At the event, Kenfo boss Anja Mikus also tried to dispel concerns that the state could gamble on the stock market.

Your nuclear fund, founded in 2017, has so far generated an average return of 3.8 percent.

However, as is usual on financial markets, the results could also be significantly higher or lower.

"There are good years and bad years," says Mikus.

»And the public has to get used to that.«

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2023-01-13

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