European mandates June 2009
Written by Sophie Baker
30/6/2009
Pension Insurance Corporation has appointed Schroders to manage an initial £100million segregated Global Corporate Bond Portfolio. "Shroders was chosen against strong competition because they not only demonstrated a sound process for managing corporate bonds and a well resourced team but, most importantly, they also clearly understood Pension Insurance Corporation's goal of securing member benefits for the very long-term, and showed the flexibility to work with us in achieving this," explained Mark Gull, partner at Pension Corporation.
Watson Wyatt has been chosen to administer pension administration, accounting, pensioner payroll and trustee secretarial services to the Massey Ferguson Works Pension Scheme. The Trustees of the scheme opted for Watson Wyatt due to increased legislative and regulatory requirements for pension funds, along with the level of complexity and compliance requirements, for in-house managed teams.
Italian pension fund services provider PensPlan has selected State Street Corporation to provide a range of investment services for its €100million in assets. PensPlan, which was established as a complementary pension system to Italy's public schemes, delivers risk management, manager selection and asset liability modelling to pension funds and institutional investors throughout Italy. State Street's Milan office will provide custody, and its Amsterdam branch will provide fund administration, risk and performance analytics services.
Friends Provident will supply a new group stakeholder pension scheme for high street insurance retailer Swinton's 4,700 employees. The new stakeholder scheme will replace the existing one provided by Winterthur Life, and aims to meet the requirements of the UK-wide insurance group. All new employees plus members of the existing stakeholder scheme will be invited to join the new scheme.
State Street Corporation has announced its selection to provide a range of hedge fund administration services for approximately $6bn of assets advised by Caxton Associates LP. Fund accounting, fund administration, tax and risk services to five master-feeder fund structures, managed by Caxton Associates, will be provided by International Fund Services (IFS), State Street's hedge fund administration company.
Barnett Waddingham has been appointed by the trustees of the Samworth Brothers Limited Superannuation Scheme as provider of actuarial services and pensions administration services. The chilled foods producer's defined benefit scheme has 5,000 members, and remains open to employees.
Hymans Robertson has been chosen by the £200million Doosan Babcock Energy Pension Scheme to provide investment consultancy. Investment strategy, scheme structure and manager selection advice will all be provided by the independent benefits and investment consultant. David Somers, chairman of the trustees at Doosan Babcock explained: "The trustees were keen to work with an adviser who would be proactive in their approach and would reflect the individual characteristics of our scheme in their advice."
BlackRock has been appointed fiduciary manager for Henkel's €2bn global pension scheme. The mandate covers five schemes in five countries - Germany, US, UK, Ireland and the Netherlands. The appointment is the first time the entire asset management of a multinational company's defined benefit (DB) assets has been outsourced to an external manager.
Pension Insurance Corporation has announced that it has agreed its first pension insurance buy-in agreement with the Trustees of the Warwick International Group Pension Scheme, valued at around £57million. The transaction covers retired pensioners only, and PIC will also take over responsibility for the administration of these pensions.
Hewitt Associates has been selected to provide scheme actuary and related services to the Daily Mail and General Trust plc (DMGT) pension schemes. Hewitt's Richard Whitelam has been appointed scheme actuary to the main Harmsworth Pension Scheme, which has over 21,000 members and assets of more than £1bn, as well as for two other DMGT schemes. These schemes will be supported by a full range of actuarial services including guidance on funding, risk management advice and monitoring of funding levels.
Capita Hartshead has been appointed by Waltham Forest for its Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS) for a period of four years, with the potential of a two-year extension. Capita Hartshead will administer the London Borough of Waltham Forest Pension Fund, and a spokesperson for the Fund said Capita Hartshead was chosen for their demonstrable knowledge, systems and procedures necessary to provide effective and efficient administration.
Profund Solutions Limited has won a new five-year agreement with Premier Pensions Management for the use of their oPen and Clarity products until at least 2014. Premier Pensions Management has used oPen as their pensions administration software platform since 2005, but will add Clarity from early summer 2009.
