Pension funds as owners: stakes in 41 ZSE listings run from 0.56% to 96.12%

Conversations about pension funds usually stop at the return on the accounting unit. But Croatia's mandatory pension funds (OMF) are not only savers — they are owners. In the snapshot of top-ten shareholder lists dated 1 September 2026, pension funds appear in 41 Zagreb Stock Exchange listings, with combined stakes ranging from 0.56% to 96.12%.

This article describes that list. It is not a ranking, not an assessment of any fund, and not a recommendation.

The range is extreme

Combined stake of all OMF categories (A, B and C, across four managers — AZ, Erste Plavi, PBZ CO and Raiffeisen) per company, at both ends:

Largest stakes:

Smallest stakes:

Seven companies have an OMF stake above 50%. Six are below 5%.

A pattern visible to the naked eye

The names with the largest stakes — Villa Dubrovnik, Modra špilja, Jadran, VIS, Quattro logistika — are generally not the stocks that appear at the top of daily turnover. The names with the smallest stakes — Zagrebačka banka, INA, JANAF, Valamar — are among the best known and most liquid on the exchange.

That is a relationship between two numbers, not a claim about cause. Several explanations are possible: the size of the free float, privatisation and recapitalisation history, issue size relative to fund size, or the presence of a dominant strategic owner in the larger companies that leaves little room for anyone else. Which explanation applies to which company cannot be read off this list.

What the list does show is a practical consequence: when 80–96% of a listing sits with four institutions that hold positions for the long term by the nature of their business, the stock trades rarely. A small number of transactions means a single order moves the price further than it would in a more liquid name. A daily percentage change on such tickers often sits behind one or two trades.

The middle of the list

Between those extremes are names that show up in turnover regularly:

• PODR Podravka — 45.40% (PBZ CO B, AZ B, Raiffeisen B, Erste Plavi B)
• ADRS Adris grupa — 36.51%
• KOEI KONČAR-Elektroindustrija — 35.90%
• CKML Čakovečki mlinovi — 34.96%
• GARB THE GARDEN COLLECTIVE — 34.87%
• BSQR BOSQAR — 31.41%
• LKRI LUKA RIJEKA — 30.28%
• ATGR Atlantic Grupa — 29.13%
• LKPC LUKA PLOČE — 24.03%
• ARNT Arena Hospitality Group — 19.10%

For Podravka, Adris, KONČAR and Atlantic Grupa, all four managers appear, or three out of four — so this is not a single fund's position but a name held across the industry.

Categories A and B are not the same thing

The list records the fund category alongside each holding. The pattern is consistent: wherever category A appears, category B almost always appears too, but not the other way round. Category C does not appear in top-ten shareholder lists at all.

That matches the difference in the prescribed investment structure: A has the most room for equities, B is more balanced, and C is the category with the smallest permitted equity share. The return figures on the same page show that difference as spreads — one-year returns for category A range from +9.27% to +17.03%, for category B from +4.97% to +13.09%, and for category C from +1.05% to +1.37% (unit values as of 31 July 2026). A larger equity share means a wider spread of outcomes, in both directions.

Voluntary funds are a smaller story

Voluntary pension funds (DMF) also appear in top-ten shareholder lists, but on a markedly smaller scale:

Two funds — AZ Profit and Raiffeisen DMF — carry almost the entire value of DMF positions visible in these lists. The closed funds (Cestarski, Erste, Nestlé, Pošta) hold one to three positions each, measured in hundreds of thousands of euros or less.

What to do with these numbers

The list says who the owner is, not whether something is cheap or expensive. But it is useful for reading the exchange for one reason: it explains why some stocks barely trade while others see hundreds of transactions a day. Before reading a small ticker's percentage change as a signal, it is worth checking how many trades sat behind it and how much of the issue is in free float at all.

Source: snapshots of top-ten shareholder lists (ZSE/SKDD), as of 1 September 2026; accounting units and returns from HANFA public disclosures, as of 31 July 2026. The full list of all 41 listings and monthly updated units are available on the pension funds page.

This article is informational and does not constitute investment advice, a recommendation to buy or sell, or an assessment of any individual fund.