On June 12, 2026, SpaceX completed its initial public offering (IPO) on Nasdaq, raising approximately $75 billion at a valuation of about $1.75 trillion — the largest IPO in the history of the markets.
SpaceX may be only the beginning, as OpenAI, Anthropic and a growing line of artificial intelligence companies are expected to make their debut on the public markets during this year.
The question that directly concerns Greek pension funds is not whether SpaceX is a good or bad investment. It is whether the existing governance frameworks are equipped to manage a new generation of listings with similar characteristics.
How SpaceX enters portfolios without active investment rationale
Several Greek pension funds invest part or all of their equity portfolio through passive mutual funds that track international indices. Passive investing means that the manager does not personally select individual stocks, but instead replicates at low cost the composition of a benchmark index. The rationale is clear: low management cost, broad geographic diversification, transparency regarding the methodology.
However, this approach has a side effect that is often overlooked. When a company is listed on the stock exchange and meets the criteria for inclusion in an index, it is automatically added to all portfolios that track it. No Board of Directors decision or manager instruction is required; the inclusion happens mechanically, meaning it is an indirect allocation of capital without an explicit investment decision. It is worth noting that different index providers apply different inclusion criteria.
Three risks for Greek pension funds
The entry of SpaceX —and the artificial intelligence technology companies expected to follow, such as Anthropic and OpenAI— into the portfolios of Greek pension funds raises 3 distinct risks.
1. Index Providers: Neutral Referees or Commercial Actors?
The biggest risk for Greek pension funds may not be the companies entering the index, but the incentives of the people deciding who gets in. Most investors view index providers as neutral referees applying objective criteria.
In reality, however, index providers are businesses with specific commercial incentives: their revenues come from licensing their indices to providers of passive mutual funds and asset managers, and the more capital tracks an index, the more valuable — and profitable — that index becomes.
There are already specific examples that substantiate this concern. In early 2026, both the Nasdaq-100 and FTSE Russell opened public consultations on changes to the IPO inclusion methodology — changes designed to allow the faster entry of companies with low free float but high total market capitalization, such as SpaceX.
In May 2026, the Nasdaq-100 officially adopted a “Fast Entry” rule for IPOs that meet specific size criteria: stocks are assessed for inclusion as early as the 7th trading day and are included on the 15th — instead of the traditional waiting period of three to twelve months. FTSE Russell followed with similar changes in May 2026.
Notably, the S&P 500 — the index with the largest passive exposure globally — resisted the pressure and announced in June 2026 that it would not change its methodology, maintaining the profitability requirement for inclusion.
This difference has immediate consequences: a fund tracking the Nasdaq-100 already has exposure to SpaceX, while a fund tracking the S&P 500 may not. The question raised today is whether these safeguards can withstand the pressure exerted by an environment where the commercial survival of an index provider depends on being first — and not merely being right.
2. Valuation risk
SpaceX entered the markets at a particularly high valuation relative to its fundamentals. In its report on June 2, 2026, Morningstar —one of the most recognized independent equity research houses worldwide— estimated the company’s intrinsic value at approximately $780 billion, or $63 per share. This corresponds to a discount of approximately 53-55% relative to the IPO valuation of $1.75 trillion.
This assessment is not an isolated opinion. Denmark’s AkademikerPension —one of Denmark’s largest occupational pension funds, with assets of approximately $25 billion— independently concluded that SpaceX’s value “cannot reasonably exceed $1 trillion,” that is, approximately 57% of the IPO price.
Why does this matter for a fund member? If the market begins to correct downward the gap between price and fundamentals highlighted by Morningstar, the decline in SpaceX’s share price will translate directly into a reduced net asset value (NAV) of the index that includes it, and this reduction will be directly reflected in the value of each member’s participation unit in their fund’s investment capital, which in a defined contribution (DC) pension plan also determines, without guarantee, the amount of their future pension — depending on the weighting of SpaceX in that specific index at that time.
3. Governance risk
Elon Musk is expected to retain, through a dual-class share structure, approximately 42% of the share capital but about 79% of the company’s total voting rights. The result is that one shareholder can control the majority of the company’s decisions while holding less than half of the share capital.
For pension funds, this means economic exposure without meaningful corporate influence. A characteristic example of institutional reaction is the aforementioned Danish AkademikerPension, which officially excluded SpaceX from its investment options on May 29, 2026 —before the IPO was even completed— describing its governance structure as “catastrophic” through statements by chief investment officer Anders Schelde.
Similar concerns were expressed in a joint letter on May 13, 2026 by three major American pension funds —the New York State Common Retirement Fund, the New York City Comptroller’s Office and CalPERS, with total assets under management exceeding $1 trillion— describing SpaceX’s governance structure as “novel and extreme.”
Which actions should be considered
SpaceX signals a broader change in the way public markets are evolving — toward larger companies, with lower free float, stronger founder control and higher valuations. This fact has an immediate practical consequence: for a Board of Directors that chooses a passive strategy, investment oversight does not end with the selection of the index — it begins there.
Three specific actions are worth considering:
1. Review of the benchmark index
The selected benchmark index is not merely a technical parameter — it is a fundamental investment decision. Boards of Directors must therefore know precisely which indices their managers track, how often their composition is reviewed, and what the process is for including new companies — and in addition develop structured evaluation methodologies that go beyond performance comparison.
Indicatively, such an evaluation may include: concentration analysis, namely the percentage of the index occupied by the largest companies and how this has changed over time; assessment of the inclusion methodology, with emphasis on whether the criteria are clear, stable and resilient to commercial pressures; and comparison of alternative indices that apply different weighting or exclusion criteria.
2. Active corporate governance
Passive investing does not mean a passive stance toward the companies in which a fund invests. Even when the manager mechanically replicates an index without selecting individual stocks, the fund remains a shareholder with voting rights in every company included in the index — and this right can be exercised either directly or through explicit instructions to the investment manager.
In relation to companies such as SpaceX, exercising voting rights is one of the few available mechanisms through which a fund can institutionally express its concerns. When enough funds coordinate this action — through joint letters, joint voting or public interventions — they acquire collective bargaining weight that none would have individually, precisely because together they represent a larger aggregate share of the equity capital.
The benefit for members is substantial: better corporate governance in the companies where their savings are invested reduces in the long term the risk of mismanagement, financial scandals and decisions that serve management at the expense of the other shareholders.
3. Strengthening communication with members
Members have the right to know what their investment includes. As the weight of companies such as SpaceX in benchmark indices grows, it becomes more difficult for a member to understand exactly what their contributions are invested in by reading only the general title of the investment strategy, such as “global equities” or “developed market equities.”
Changes in index composition —such as the inclusion of SpaceX— must be reflected in regular member updates, in simple and understandable language, not only in technical reports. This is not merely a matter of transparency; it is also a matter of alignment: Boards of Directors must examine, at reasonably regular intervals, whether the composition of the portfolio —and specific companies with a high-profile public discussion around their governance— remains compatible with the values and expectations of the body of members they represent, and have an available way to record and take such concerns into account when they are expressed.
* Christos Bakas is Senior Retirement Investment Strategist
* Konstantinos Nikolaou is Managing Director, Prudential B. Marghios & Partners
Note: The text reflects the personal analysis of the authors and does not constitute investment advice.
Sources
https://capital.com/en-int/learn/ipo/spacex-ipo
https://www.ashurst.com/en/insights/nasdaq-proposes-new-fast-entry-rule-for-the-nasdaq-100-index/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/new-rule-could-fast-track-spacex-ipo-for-nasdaq-index-inclusion-172327734.html
https://spotgamma.com/spacex-ipo-index-changes-spotgamma/
https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/morningstar-values-spacex-780-billion-133514814.html
https://fortune.com/2026/06/03/spacex-ipo-stocks-elon-musk-morningstar-overvalued-half-smart-investors-wait-buy/
https://www.morningstar.com/stocks/why-we-think-spacex-ipo-is-overvalued
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-29/danish-pension-fund-blacklists-spacex-citing-governance-issues
https://thenextweb.com/news/danish-pension-spacex-blacklist-governance-overvalued
https://comptroller.nyc.gov/reports/letter-to-spacex-re-ipo-from-nyc-comptroller-levine-nys-comptroller-dinapoli-and-calpers-ceo-frost/
https://www.osc.ny.gov/press/releases/2026/05/new-york-state-comptroller-dinapoli-calpers-ceo-marcie-frost-and-nyc-comptroller-mark-levine-raise