UK - Scottish Pensions Trustees (SPT) - the Scottish arm of Capital Cranfield Trustees - has appointed Roger MacNicol as an additional client director.

STRONG institutional sales have boosted new business figures to record levels, Standard Life Investments says.

Ministers willing to look at rules on pensions; Clearer view of pension costs in the offing; Northern Rock takeover brings back nationalisation; Staff 'claim £1bn false expenses'

US - The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) has adopted a diversified investment policy which it claims will give it a 57% likelihood of achieving full funding within ten years, compared to 19% under its previous policy.

AUSTRALIA - Watson Wyatt has appointed former Mercer staffer Tony Arnold as a senior investment consultant to its Australian investment consulting practice.

UK - The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has published a statement regarding its regulation of mortality assumptions for defined benefit (DB) schemes.

THE Scottish government has unveiled a new-look local government pension scheme - which is claim could save taxpayers around £20m a year.

GERMANY - Allianz Global Investors Deutschland (AllianzGI) and the life insurer Allianz Lebensversicherungs-AG (Allianz Leben) have founded a joint subsidiary, to serve its corporate clients as a trustee for CTA models (contractual trust arrangements)....

PARLIAMENT will be responsible for the extinction of defined benefit type pension arrangements unless conditional indexing is included in the Pensions Bill, the Association of Consulting Actuaries warns.

PICTET FUNDS, the investment fund distribution arm of Pictet & Cie, is set to launch a fund covering Latin American currency emerging debt.