Preliminary findings of the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority’s (FSA) investigation into Alecta’s investments have found that the pension company “violated several regulations”.

The FSA said it has notified Alecta of its observations from its investigations, which have now moved on to a sanction review. Alecta has been given until the 6 September to respond to the FSA, which it confirmed it was on track to do.

“This means that we now will make a legal assessment in order to find out if there are reasons for us to intervene,” an FSA spokesperson said.

Alecta has faced several crises over the past 18 months, which began when it lost SEK 12bn in March 2023 on its investments in three American banks – Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic Bank and Signature Bank.

Following this, the FSA opened an investigation into these investments in May 2023 before expanding the remit to include Alecta’s investments in indebted real estate company, Heimstaden Boden, in September 2023, in which Alecta lost SEK 12.7bn.

Alecta has also struggled to appoint a permanent chair of the board since former chair, Ingrid Bonde, resigned in October 2023, amid the FSA’s investigations.

In January 2024, the committee of Alecta proposed Lars Rohde to become the new chair but withdrew this due to a conflict of interest. After Rohde was proposed as the new board chair, the committee became aware that Rohde was planning to also accept to be proposed to another board in the near future. Following this, the committee instead nominated Carina Åkerström, former CEO of Handelsbanken, but she resigned after only 11 days.

Currently, Jan-Olof Jacke, in his capacity as first deputy chairman, has taken over as chairman of the board, which Alecta’s nomination committee previously said “works well”.

“In response to the FSA’s most recent findings, an Alecta spokesperson said: "As part of the review process, Alecta has received a letter of opinion with the FSA's preliminary assessments and will respond to it in accordance with the usual process.

“We will then wait to see how the FSA proceeds with the information we have provided and what decision it makes. There is no decision from the FSA yet, this is an ongoing review process. When we received the opinion letter, work began on putting together our responses. So, this is a work in progress.”

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