AUSTRALIA - Industry superannuation fund Media Super has agreed to offer a A$20m (US$17m) loan to help indirectly finance Australian film and television programmes.

NETHERLANDS - Dutch pension fund manager APG said it plans to develop a formal policy surrounding environmental, social and governance factors for each asset class in 2010.

Dutch pension experts question whether the interbank swap yield curve is the best rate to discount liabilities against, as Giovanni Legorano and Raquel Pichardo-Allison report

MEXICO - ING Groep NV's Mexican pension fund, the nation's best performer in the past three years, is buying fixed-rate bonds as a bet that inflation will keep slowing and may lead the central bank to cut interest rates.

NETHERLANDS - The Rabobank pension fund has shifted its equity portfolio from enhanced indexing to more active strategies, including a "smart-beta" intrinsic value strategy.

RUSSIA - Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin's proposal to raise the retirement age is an attack on the United Russia party that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin chairs, a senior party official said.

US - The New York State Common Retirement Fund has hired The Rock Creek Group to run the first mandate in its new emerging managers hedge fund programme, and said a new emerging managers real estate programme is in the works.

US - Barr Rosenberg, chairman of AXA Rosenberg, and Tom Mead, head of research, both co-founders, have resigned after an investigation into the reporting of a coding error found the two did not follow firm protocol.

NORWAY/ASIA - Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the world's second largest, will increase investments in Asia, as the region leads the global economic recovery, said Norges Bank Governor Svein Gjedrem.

US - Emerging markets specialist Gramercy has hired the former co-heads of JP Morgan Asset Management's emerging markets debt group to launch new strategies focused on the asset class, Gramercy said.