ITALY - The European Commission has once again put pressure on Italy to equalise the pension age of men and women, asking the country to move up its plans to have employees retiring at the same age by six years to 2012.

NETHERLANDS - The main Dutch social partners have reached a common position on the fact that state and second pillar pension age should rise to 66 from 65 in 2020.

US - The San Diego County Employees Retirement Association (SDCERA) Board of Retirement has decreased its assumed rate of return to 8%, from 8.25%, the assumed rate for the past 13 years.

NETHERLANDS/UK - Dutch pension fund and asset manager PGGM has allocated €75m (US$89.8m) to a UK property fund run by Standard Life.

The number of investors considering climate change policies as key to manager selection has doubled since 2007, but the actual integration of these policies into investment mandates has failed to take off, a report by the Institutional Investors Group...

EUROPE - The number of investors considering climate change policies as key to manager selection has doubled since 2007, but the actual integration of these policies into investment mandates has failed to take off, a report by the Institutional Investors...

EUROPE/ITALY - The European Commission has issued a new request for Italy to move swiftly to equalise the retirement age for men and women.

CANADA/US - An investor group including the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (OTPP) is set to acquire IT solutions provider SonicWALL in a US$717m deal.

GLOBAL - Pension funds should base their investment decisions on scenario planning given current market uncertainty, but this is prevented by the fact the pension industry is massively incentivised to herding, Ashmore head of research Jerome Booth said....

IRELAND - Workers' unions at the Irish Republic's biggest telecoms operator firm Eircom have approved a major pension restructuring programme, eliminating a €407m (US$502.8m) defined benefit scheme deficit at the troubled firm.