Press release -
New Head of Debt Management at Kommuninvest
Kommuninvest has appointed Christian Ragnartz, 46, as new Head of Debt Management. Christian takes over after Anders Gånge, who spent 10 years at Kommuninvest as Head of Funding, but who leaves for a new position at the Riksbank.
“We are very pleased to announce Christian as the new Head of Debt Management,” says Maria Viimne, deputy CEO and chief operating officer at Kommuninvest. “Christians’ solid skills and experience in portfolio management and other capital market issues for public sector financial institutions are highly valuable.”
Christian Ragnartz comes from a role as Chief Strategist at Kommuninvest. Before Christian started at Kommuninvest in 2016, he worked as Deputy Executive Director at Finansinspektionen, Chief Investment Officer at The Seventh Swedish National Pension Fund (AP7) and held various positions at the Riksbank.
“It is a great challenge to continue to develop Kommuninvest’s debt management activities, with the aim of becoming the world’s leading municipal funding agency,” says Christian Ragnartz. “The markets are undergoing radical changes and, in order to ensure low borrowing costs for our members, we will increase our focus on the liquidity of our bonds.”
Kommuninvest has a debt portfolio of approx. SEK 375 billion and annually raises nearly SEK 100 billion in long-term funding, to finance Swedish municipal investments.
Christian Ragnartz started his new position on August 7th.
Topics
Kommuninvest is a municipal cooperation for efficient and sustainable financing of housing, infrastructure, schools, hospitals etc. Together, we get better loan terms than each one individually. Since its inception in 1986, the Kommuninvest collaboration has helped lower the local government sector’s borrowing costs by many billion kronor. Currently, 288 municipalities and county councils/regions are members of this voluntary cooperation, out of a total of 310 Swedish local governments. With total assets of around SEK 360 billion (USD ~41 billion), Kommuninvest is the largest lender to the local government sector and the sixth largest credit institution in Sweden. The head office is located in Örebro.
