(Bloomberg) -- Denmark’s biggest pension fund, ATP, is taking a major hit on its 2.3 billion-krone ($324 million) stake in troubled battery maker Northvolt AB, Danish broadcaster DR reported.
ATP is one of the largest owners in Northvolt with a stake of about 5%. The value of that holding “probably won’t be very far from zero,” the asset manager’s Chief Executive Officer Martin Praestegaard told DR in an interview, stopping short of giving a specific amount for the writedown. “By far most of the investment is gone,” Praestegaard said, according to DR.
“If you look at how the course and process around Northvolt has developed, it does not take much imagination to imagine that the investment is not worth much at this time,” Mikkel Svenstrup, investment director at ATP, said in an emailed response to questions.
Northvolt filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US on Nov. 21 following months of talks with owners, customers and creditors to save the embattled battery producer. Having failed to raise funds, the company had just one week’s cash in its accounts at the time of the filing.
Goldman Sachs Asset Management, the second-largest shareholder in Northvolt, said in November it will write down its entire $896 million stake in the company at the end of the year, the Financial Times has reported.
“At ATP, we continuously value our unlisted investments at fair value, and as a matter of principle we do not publicly comment on the value of our investments,” Svenstrup said.
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