Savings, Pensions & Investment
Pensions and long-term savings are the deepest pool of patient capital in any economy — the money that, invested well, funds the infrastructure, growth companies and innovation that compound over decades.
How the world's retirement systems bank long-term capital
Hover a highlighted country to see how its retirement system works and who runs the money. Mostly fundedMixedMostly pay-as-you-go
Sources: OECD Pension Markets in Focus / Pensions at a Glance 2025, national pension supervisors and fund annual reports, ICI, APRA, NBIM, GPIF, CPPIB, NPS, PPF, France Assureurs, DNB, AP funds, Alecta and Swiss federal pension guidance.
1 · Where the savings sit
Where Europe's retirement savings sit
| Country | % funded | Funded DB | Funded DC | Personal pensions | Tax wrappers (ISAs, assurance-vie) | Non-pension insurance | PAYG (PV of promises) |
|---|
Source: Dealroom country pension-system research (2025), from the report “From Savings to Sovereignty”. Funded percentages include public funded statutory schemes not broken out above (Denmark's ATP ~$0.12T, Sweden's AP buffer funds + PPM ~$0.45T, the Dutch AOW reserve ~$0.05T). PAYG columns are present values of accrued future benefits — promises, not assets. Cross-checks: Eurostat's accrued-to-date entitlements table (nasa_10_pens1, 2021) puts unfunded entitlements at Germany 320%, France 397%, Netherlands 210%, Sweden 192% and Denmark 24% of GDP; OECD Pension Markets in Focus 2025 puts pension assets at 206% of GDP in Denmark, 151% in the Netherlands, 116% in Sweden.
2 · The 0.04% problem
The 0.04% problem: pensions barely touch venture
Flow widths are indicative — the three big buckets each hold well over 15% of pension assets, while venture stays a sliver even at a hypothetical 5%. Hover a flow to isolate it.
Source: Dealroom, “From Savings to Sovereignty” (Sept 2025), based on New Financial, Eurostat, Atomico and Invest Europe data. Updates: household assets from Eurostat nasa_10_f_bs (EU27 €39.7T end-2024, provisional); European pension assets ~$9.7T end-2024 and ~$11.1T end-2025 (OECD Pension Markets in Focus; the $15T figure includes insurance-based pension savings per New Financial's wider definition); 2024 pension→VC flows and allocation rates from Atomico State of European Tech 2025 with Invest Europe data. Matching the US allocation rate would unlock an estimated $210B of additional European venture funding over a decade (Atomico).
Capital allocation
What a real allocation would fund
A venture allocation isn't spent at once — funds draw it down over roughly a decade, so a portfolio weight becomes an annual pace. Drag the dial to see what a real target would deploy each year, against the ~$45B European startups raise annually.
Pensions hold about $15T. Today they steer ~0.04% to venture; Dealroom's “From Savings to Sovereignty” report argues for 2%. Move the dial and watch the venture ribbon above respond.
venture
~10-yr pace
Source: Dealroom.co · pension AuM ~$15T (New Financial / OECD); European VC investment ~$45B/yr (Atomico State of European Tech 2025); the 2% target from Dealroom's “From Savings to Sovereignty”. Annual pace = allocation ÷ ~10-year fund life; the dial is illustrative — at 2% it is ~$30B/yr, close to Europe's annual scale-up funding gap.
3 · Funded vs promised
Funded savings vs unfunded pension promises
Source: Dealroom.co analysis of Eurostat. Horizontal: accrued-to-date entitlements of unfunded government and social-security pension schemes (nasa_10_pens1, closing stock, % of GDP, 2021 — the latest triennial vintage; the 2024 edition lands end-2026). Vertical: household holdings of listed shares, investment funds, insurance and pension entitlements (nasa_10_f_bs, 2024) per household (lfst_hhnhtych) or per person (demo_pjan) — toggle the denominator. Per-household figures run ~2–2.5× the per-capita ones (household size); on a per-capita basis these values line up with Bruegel's published per-capita comparisons. The original version of this chart was built on Bruegel's 2021 Capital Markets Union work; Bruegel's 2025 update (Kirkegaard) reaches the same conclusion — unreformed pensions are the real obstacle to EU capital-market depth. Denmark's unfunded figure is low because its tax-financed folkepension sits outside social insurance. USA & Japan (estimates, not Eurostat-comparable): US vertical = Fed Z.1 household equities + funds + life insurance + pension entitlements (2024) per Census household (~$655K ≈ €606K; Z.1 equities include closely-held businesses); US horizontal = Social Security's unfunded obligation for past and current participants ($52.9T, 2025 Trustees) ÷ GDP ≈ 181% — federal-employee and state & local plans would add more. Japan vertical = BoJ flow-of-funds equity + investment trusts + insurance & pensions (Mar 2026) per household (~¥20.6M ≈ €121K); horizontal = public-pension implicit debt (¥1,110T ≈ 200% of GDP, 2019 MHLW actuarial valuation via Oguro/CIGS).
4 · The initiatives
The initiatives racing to unlock pension capital
| Initiative | Launch | Scale / commitment | Mechanism | Status (mid-2026) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🇩🇰Dansk Vækstkapital | 2011 | ~DKK 9.4B across DVK I–III, 55 funds | Pension-backed fund-of-funds into Danish VC/growth | DVK IV raising first close DKK 1.7B, Nov 2025 |
| 🇫🇮Tesi / KRR series | 2008– | KRR I–IV, €135M→€175M per vintage | State fund-of-funds with pension LPs (Keva, VER, Ilmarinen) | Ongoing ~500 Finnish startups reached |
| 🇫🇷Tibi Initiative | 2019 | €6.4B + €7B + €13B phases 1–3; ~€31B cumulative target | Institutional investors pledge to accredited VC/growth funds | Phase 3 targeting €15B by 2030, going European |
| 🇩🇪WIN-Initiative | 2024 | ~€12B committed to 2030 coalition target >€25B | KfW-anchored pact (Allianz, BlackRock, Deutsche Bank…) into German VC | Deploying €2.6B deployed by end-2025; WIN 2.0 raising |
| 🇬🇧Mansion House Accord | 2023 / 2025 | 17 DC providers, ~90% of savers 10% private markets, ≥5% UK by 2030 | Voluntary pledge; Pension Schemes Act 2026 adds a capped reserve power | Law since Apr 2026 Compact had invested £1.6B by Oct 2025 |
| 🇳🇱Pension reform (Wtp) | 2023 | ~€550B moved on 1 Jan 2026 ~9.5M members switched to DC | System-wide DB→DC transition frees riskier long-term allocations | Transition full migration deadline 2028 |
| 🇩🇪Bavaria foundations rule | 2025 | 5% allocation allowed | Lets public & private foundations access VC via fund-of-funds | In force |
| 🇪🇺ETCI → ETCI 2.0 | 2023 / 2026 | €3.9B raised; 2.0 targets €15–20B to unlock ~€80B for scale-ups | EIB/EIF fund-of-funds courting pension funds & insurers (TechEU) | 2.0 launched €1.25B EIB/EIF anchor, Dec 2025 |
| 🇪🇺EU pensions package | 2025 | EU-wide recommendation | Auto-enrolment with opt-out, pension dashboards, IORP II & PEPP reform | Recommendation adopted 20 Nov 2025; national uptake pending |
| 🇺🇸401(k) access to alternatives | 2025 | $12T+ DC market opened | Executive Order 14330; DOL fiduciary safe-harbor for PE/VC in defaults | Rulemaking DOL proposal Mar 2026; final rule expected late 2026 |
Sources: Danske Private Equity / Danske Bank (DVK); Tesi; DG Trésor and École polytechnique (Tibi phases); KfW and IPE (WIN); HM Treasury, ABI and LCP (Mansion House Compact 2023, Accord of 13 May 2025, Pension Schemes Act 2026 — Royal Assent 29 Apr 2026, mandation reserve power capped at 10%/5% and usable only 2028–32); DNB and European Pensions (Wtp “invaren”); Sifted (Bavaria); EIF/EIB press (ETCI 2.0, 26 Mar 2026); European Commission Recommendation (EU) 2025/2384 (auto-enrolment, tracking, dashboards); White House EO 14330 (7 Aug 2025) and DOL EBSA proposed rule (31 Mar 2026). This table updates the 2025 slide from the “From Savings to Sovereignty” report.
5 · Savings & Investments Union
Europe's answer: the Savings and Investments Union
Europe's problem isn't saving — households put away ~15% of disposable income, roughly four times the US rate.Household saving rate: euro area 15.2% of disposable income (Eurostat, 2024) vs ~3.8% in the US (BEA, 2024). It's what the savings do next: almost a third idles in bank deposits, and Europeans hold nearly as much US equity as European.34% of euro-area household equity holdings are US assets vs 35% European — ECB Financial Integration and Structure report, June 2026. Less disloyalty than a shortage of investable opportunities at home. The Savings and Investments Union (March 2025) is the EU's plan to fix that: savings accounts that invest, pensions that auto-enrol, and one capital market instead of 27.
“The European Union is home to a staggering €33 trillion in private savings, predominantly held in currency and deposits.”
Household wealth, country by country
Where household wealth sits
Financial assets per person by instrument — purchasing-power dollars by default, or unadjusted market exchange rates. Deposits weigh on the south and east; funded pensions lift Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands to US-style totals. The EU27 deposit share has been stuck near 30% since 2010 — the fact the SIU exists to change.
Source: Dealroom.co analysis — Eurostat financial balance sheets (nasa_10_f_bs, households + NPISH, non-consolidated, 2025) per person (demo_pjan), converted at IMF WEO purchasing-power parities (PPPEX); United States from Federal Reserve Z.1 table B.101 (end-2025) — the same household + nonprofit scope. Approach follows Bruegel's per-capita comparison (Christie, McCaffrey & Pinkus, “EU savers need a single-market place to invest”, Apr 2024). The “$ market” view converts at the year-average exchange rate instead (US$1.13 per €, 2025) — the unadjusted gap is wider (~4×) because most EU price levels sit below the US. Money-market funds count as investment funds, not deposits; “Other” bundles debt securities, loans and other receivables. Deposit share of total household financial assets: EU27 ~30% (barely moved since 2010), US ~10%. The cost of the allocation gap: since 2000, annual valuation gains on household assets averaged 24% of gross disposable income in the US versus 4.2% in the euro area (ECB, Philip Lane, Oct 2025); OECD private pension assets are $39.0T in the US vs $5.0T in the EU (2023). Rebuild: scripts/build-household-wealth-per-capita.mjs.
From CMU to SIU — a decade in the making
2015 – 2024The Capital Markets Union: a decade of drift
Two action plans and three Commissions chased the same goal — one capital market — with little to show: the deposit share never moved.
- Sep 2015CMU Action Plan (Juncker/Hill): 33 actions toward a single capital market by 2019.
- Jun 2017Mid-term review re-launches: covered bonds, the PEPP pan-EU pension, ESA reform.
- Sep 2020CMU Action Plan 2.0: 16 more actions — ESAP, listing rules, ELTIF review.
- Jan 2024ELTIF 2.0 applies: retail finally gets a workable route into private assets.
- Mar 2024Eurogroup statement: finance ministers concede the CMU needs a relaunch.
- Apr 2024Letta report coins the “Savings and Investments Union”: €33T of private savings, mostly parked in deposits.
- Sep 2024Draghi report sizes the gap the savings must fund: €750–800B/yr by 2030.
2025 –The SIU: same goal, quarterly deadlines
The rebrand came with a delivery rhythm — something has shipped every quarter since March 2025.
- Mar 2025SIU strategy adopted (COM(2025) 124): citizens & savings, investment, integration, supervision.
- Jun 2025“Finance Europe” label launched by seven member states; securitisation revival proposed.
- Sep 2025Savings & Investment Accounts blueprint: tax-advantaged, cross-border, plus a financial-literacy strategy.
- Nov 2025Pensions package: auto-enrolment, tracking systems, dashboards; IORP II & PEPP reform.
- Dec 2025Supervision package: direct ESMA supervision of CCPs, CSDs, venues; Retail Investment Strategy deal lands — minus its inducements ban.
- Mar 2026“EU Inc.” 28th-regime company form: pan-EU incorporation online in 48h.
- Q2 2027Mid-term review — the Commission's own deadline for proof that deposits are moving.
The bull case: delivery, on schedule. Unusually for Brussels, the SIU has shipped something every quarter since March 2025 — accounts, pensions, securitisation, supervision, company law. EIB President Nadia Calviño frames the goal as getting frameworks in place “to make sure European savings are channelled to where they are most needed: innovative businesses across Europe.” Retail money is already finding routes into private assets: 159 ELTIF 2.0 funds are registered, and semi-liquid funds have passed €20B.
The bear case: watered down, too slow. The Retail Investment Strategy lost its inducements ban in trilogue, the pensions package is a recommendation rather than law, and supervision reform faces national resistance. CEPS's Karel Lannoo: “The Savings and Investment Union has had a bad start — we need an ‘emergency brake’.” After a decade of CMU drift, the test is the Q2 2027 review: has the deposit share actually fallen?
Sources: European Commission CMU action plans (30 Sep 2015; mid-term review 8 Jun 2017; 24 Sep 2020) and SIU strategy (COM(2025) 124, 19 Mar 2025) with follow-on packages (30 Sep, 29 Oct, 20 Nov, 4 Dec 2025; 18 Mar 2026); Eurogroup statement on the future of the CMU (11 Mar 2024); ELTIF 2.0 (Regulation (EU) 2023/606, applying 10 Jan 2024); Letta, “Much More Than a Market” (Apr 2024); Draghi, “The Future of European Competitiveness” (Sep 2024); ECB (Lane speech, Oct 2025; savings-standard blog, Jun 2025; Financial Integration and Structure report, Jun 2026 — US markets capture 34% of euro-area household equity holdings vs 35% held domestically); Eurostat saving rates (euro area 15.2% vs US ~3.8%, BEA, 2024); CEPS/Lannoo commentary (Dec 2025); Euronews/Calviño (Feb 2026); ESMA ELTIF register and Morningstar (2026).
6 · Six systems compared
The big picture: six ways to fund old age
Same ageing problem, six answers. The row that cuts through the noise is net government debt: green means the state owns more than it owes (a net saver), red means it is a net debtor. Only Norway and Denmark are in the black.
Fiscal & pension scorecard
Debt, savings, and who actually banked the money
| 🇺🇸 US | 🇬🇧 UK | 🇫🇷 France | 🇯🇵 Japan | 🇩🇰 Denmark | 🇳🇴 Norway | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Approach | PAYG + private DC | PAYG + workplace | Pure PAYG | Borrow & invest | Fully funded | Oil wealth fund |
| Gov debt — gross % of GDP | 124% | 102% | 116% | 207% | 28% | 45% |
| Gov debt — net − = net saver | 97%~83% consolidated | 94% | 108% | 137%~77% consolidated | −6%net creditor | −384%oil-fund wealth |
| State investment fund size, % of GDP | Soc. Security fund~8% of GDP | None | FRR~0.7% · in run-off | GPIF~45% · $1.9T | NoneATP is worker-owned | GPFG oil fund~385% · $2.1T |
| Whose money is it? how the pile was built | An IOU to itselfpayroll surplus → Treasuries | — | Old earmarked leviesno fresh inflows | BorrowedJGBs (BoJ QE) + pension contributions | Workers' own savingsthey own it, not the state | Saved oil moneypetroleum export revenue |
| Household (private) savings financial assets, % of GDP | ~450% | ~230% | ~220% | ~360% | ~380% | ~150% |
| Funded pension pots % of GDP | ~153%401(k) / IRA | ~76%workplace DB/DC | ~12% | ~30%+ GPIF reserve | ~206%largest in OECD | ~12% |
| PAYG promises, unfunded accrued to date, % of GDP | ~181%Social Security | ~224%state pension | ~397% | ~200% | ~24%tax-financed | ~320% |
Norway vs Japan. Norway saved an oil windfall, so its fund is genuine net wealth — the state owns 384% of GDP more than it owes. Japan borrowed to build its pile: GPIF (~45% of GDP) is a real pension reserve of workers' contributions and will help pay pensions, but the much bigger ~192%-of-GDP asset stack is the flip side of even larger debt — mostly bonds the Bank of Japan bought with printed money — a state-scale carry trade, not saved money. Net it all out and Japan is still a debtor (~77% of GDP), just a smaller one than the US.
Sources — gross & net debt: IMF WEO & Fiscal Monitor (2025); Denmark & Norway net positions from Statistics Denmark and Statistics Norway national accounts (both net creditors; the IMF publishes no net-debt series for Norway). Consolidated net debt (Japan ~77%, US ~83%) from Chien, Du & Lustig, “Japan’s Debt Puzzle” (JEP 2025). State funds: NBIM (GPFG ~$2.1T), GPIF (~$1.9T), SSA (OASI/DI Trust Fund), FRR. Household financial assets: Fed Z.1, BoJ flow of funds, ONS, INSEE, Statistics DK/NO. Funded pension assets: OECD Pension Markets in Focus 2025. Unfunded PAYG promises (accrued-to-date): Eurostat nasa_10_pens1 2021 (France, Denmark), SSA closed-group (US), ONS (UK state pension), MHLW/Oguro (Japan), Statistics Norway (folketrygden). The unfunded-promise and net-position rows use different national bases and are not strictly like-for-like — treat as orders of magnitude.
One debt, three lenses: gross, net, and what it costs
General government debt since 1980, three ways. Gross debt is the headline everyone quotes — and on it Japan looks broke. Net debt subtracts what the state owns — and Japan drops by a third (consolidate the BoJ and the public pension funds, as Chien, Du & Lustig do, and it falls to ~77% of GDP, below the US). Interest paid is what actually hits the budget — and there the "world's most indebted country" has been paying less than half what the US pays. The lesson of the Japan debate: never read the gross number alone.
01Gross debt, % of GDP
02Net debt, % of GDP
03Interest paid, % of GDP
Source: Dealroom.co analysis based on the IMF DataMapper — general government gross debt (GGXWDG_NGDP, WEO), net debt (Fiscal Monitor) and interest paid on public debt (ie, Global Debt Database; latest year lags by one, and no EU27 aggregate is published for net debt or interest). Pulled live; the latest year is a WEO estimate. The country pills rebuild all three panels. The dashed green line on the net panel is a different measure — Japan's fully consolidated net debt (central + local government + public pension funds + Bank of Japan + public financial institutions, financial assets marked to market) from Chien, Cole & Lustig, “What about Japan?” (St. Louis Fed WP 2023-028, rev. 2025), Table 1 year-end snapshots (1997 24.7%, 2012 118.4%, 2023 94.3%) with the published Q2-2024 update of ~77–78% (Chien, Du & Lustig, JEP 2025; St. Louis Fed, Apr 2025). Segments are straight lines between the authors' snapshot years; the gap against the IMF net line is the assets the IMF measure leaves out.
“The Japanese government is a giant sovereign wealth fund — funded not with oil money like Norway, but with money borrowed from the Japanese people.”
Why Japan heldThe debt is owed to itself
~88% of JGBs are held domestically; the Bank of Japan alone holds ~43–46%, and the interest the state pays it flows back as seigniorage. Households sit on a record ¥2,386T (~$14.7T) of financial assets, and the country runs record current-account surpluses (¥31.9T in 2025) — a captive, yen-denominated funding pool no euro-area treasury enjoys.
The reframeNet debt is the honest number
Consolidate the government with the BoJ and public pension funds (GPIF) and Japan holds a financial portfolio worth ~192% of GDP — foreign bonds, equities, FX reserves. True net debt: ~77% of GDP, arguably the lowest of the majors. Japan ran a state-scale carry trade — borrow at ~0% in yen, invest abroad at higher returns — and “got very, very lucky” as foreign assets soared and the yen fell.
What's changingThe inflation trigger has been pulled
The BoJ exited negative rates in March 2024 and has hiked to 1.00% (June 2026) — the highest since 1995. The 30-year JGB yield hit 4.0%; debt service takes a record ¥31.3T (~26%) of the FY2026 budget; the IMF projects interest costs doubling by 2031. The model that made 250% carryable — free money and a captive buyer — is being dismantled in real time.
Can the promises be kept? The same debate, three accents
Pension promises are just debt that doesn't appear in the debt statistics. Each bloc is having the same argument about whether that implicit debt is a crisis — with a different accent.
United StatesThe 2032 cliff — crisis or invention?
The arithmetic isn't disputed: the 2026 Trustees Report puts OASI depletion in Q4 2032 with 78% of benefits still payable (83% on the combined funds, 2034), and the 75-year gap at 4.42% of taxable payroll (~1.5% of GDP). The fight is what to call it. Krugman: a pay-as-you-go program “won't go bankrupt” — the 25-year gap is 1.06% of GDP, less than one year's proposed military increase; the “crisis” is an invention to justify cuts, as in 2004. CRFB / MacGuineas: “Washington is sleepwalking into a retirement crisis” — the automatic ~22% cut is $18,400/year for a typical retiring couple, and fixing it today already takes a 34% payroll-tax rise or a 25% benefit cut. Kotlikoff: on an infinite horizon the hole is $71.9T — “we're not broke in 20 years, we're broke now.”
JapanAdjusted by formula, tested by inflation
Japan answered the sustainability question by formula: the 2004 reform capped contributions and lets “macroeconomic slide” automatically trim benefit indexation until the system balances over ~100 years, verified by an actuarial check every five years. The 2024 valuation puts the replacement rate on a path from 61.2% today to ~50% by 2057 — solvent on paper, with GPIF’s ¥260T as buffer, but at the price of steadily thinner pensions. The implicit debt (~¥1,110T accrued) never appears in the JGB statistics — and the new test is inflation: the slide was designed for a deflationary world, and real benefit cuts now happen in plain sight.
EuropeThe biggest promises, the hardest politics
Europe promised the most and finds the politics hardest. Accrued unfunded entitlements run from 192% of GDP (Sweden) to 496% (Spain); some states built auto-stabilisers (Sweden’s notional accounts, Germany’s sustainability factor, Finland’s life-expectancy link), but the flagship reform went the other way: France’s 2023 rise of the retirement age from 62 to 64 — carried against mass protests — was suspended in the December 2025 budget deal as the price of political survival. The EU’s answer is the funded pillar: the SIU pensions package (auto-enrolment, dashboards) is an attempt to grow assets against the promises, which is exactly what the scatter above measures.
The numbers only look incompatible because the horizons differ: Krugman's “1% of GDP” and Kotlikoff's “$72 trillion” are the same shortfall expressed over 25 years vs forever. Europe's 200–500%-of-GDP entitlements in the scatter above are the same accrued-to-date arithmetic applied honestly to every EU state — and Japan's lesson cuts both ways: implicit debt is carryable if the state holds assets, savings stay home and rates stay low. Fund the promises and the ratio stops mattering; that is the whole argument of this page.
Sources: 2026 OASDI Trustees Report (June 9, 2026); Paul Krugman, “Social Security is Facing a Political Crisis” (Jun 11, 2026), “The Clean Little Secret of Social Security” (Mar 2025) and “Inventing a Crisis” (NYT, 2004); CRFB, Analysis of the 2026 Trustees Report; Laurence Kotlikoff (Substack, Jun 2026); Chien, Du & Lustig, “Japan's Debt Puzzle” (JEP, Fall 2025); Money & Macro, “Why Japan isn't broke yet” (May 2026); IMF WEO & Fiscal Monitor (April 2026); BoJ flow of funds (Mar 2026); Japan MOF; Federal Reserve Z.1; OECD Pension Markets in Focus (prelim. 2025); MHLW 2024 actuarial valuation & Oguro/CIGS; France 24 (Dec 16, 2025); Eurostat nasa_10_pens1 (2021). Figures are each participant's own; horizon differences are flagged in place.
7 · How it's built
How this is built
- The Japan debt charts pull live from a keyless public API at load (
/api/imf-debt-ratio: IMF DataMapperGGXWDG_NGDP, Fiscal Monitor net debt,ieinterest paid), with an inline snapshot fallback so the page never renders empty. - The funded-vs-promised scatter reads the committed snapshot
/data/pension-scatter.json, generated byscripts/build-pension-scatter.mjsfrom three Eurostat datasets:nasa_10_pens1(accrued-to-date pension entitlements, unfunded schemes S13PU, 2021 — triennial; 2024 vintage due end-2026),nasa_10_f_bs(household listed shares + funds + insurance & pensions, 2024) andlfst_hhnhtych(households). - The household-wealth country comparison reads
/data/household-wealth-per-capita.json, generated byscripts/build-household-wealth-per-capita.mjs: Eurostatnasa_10_f_bsper person (demo_pjan) converted at IMF WEO purchasing-power parities (PPPEX), with the US from Fed Z.1 table B.101 (via DBnomics) — the approach follows Bruegel's April 2024 per-capita comparison. - Footnotes and source lines sit behind the small in each chart's source line (or under the block it describes) — hover or tap to read them; the full text stays in the page for search engines.
- The six-country pension matrix and the $50T→$15T→0.04% flow carry the data of Dealroom's “From Savings to Sovereignty” report (Sept 2025), cross-referenced against OECD Pension Markets in Focus 2025, Eurostat and Atomico State of European Tech 2025 — updates noted in each source line.
- The initiatives tracker and SIU timeline are hand-maintained against primary announcements (Commission communications, HM Treasury, KfW, DG Trésor, EIF/EIB, DOL) — last reviewed July 2026.
- The US-vs-Japan-vs-Europe comparison quotes each source's own published figures (Fed Z.1, BoJ flow of funds, Trustees Report, Krugman's Substack, CRFB, Kotlikoff, IMF, Eurostat); conflicting numbers are horizon or definition differences, flagged in place.
Who actually funds European tech?
The Dealroom platform tracks the LPs, funds and rounds behind these numbers — including which pension funds are finally moving.