Europe

UK - UBS Global Asset Management is urging schemes to buy equities while they are still cheap.

UK - OPRA will become more of a "risk assessor" of company pension schemes as part of proposed changes recommended in the Pickering Report.

UK - Northern women working part-time for small employers are the UK's big pension losers, according to the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

UK - Pension funds have increased their property allocations by up to 50% over the last six months in a bid to diversify risk, fund managers say.

UK - Government moves to end two-tier pensions among local council contract workers are doomed to fail, West Midlands pensions chief Mike Woodall claims.

UK - Scottish Equitable claims its new online payment system, SmartPay, will speed up the payment of pension contributions.

EUROPE/UK - European venture capital activity took another worrying slide during the second quarter 2002 posting the worst figures for three years, according to the latest data from Ernst & Young and VentureOne.

UK/EUROPE - Retained fire-fighters have vowed to fight on after an employment tribunal ruling denied 15,000 employees the right to join the Firemen's Pension Scheme.

DENMARK - The DKK250bn ATP Pension Fund (Arbejdsmarkedets Tillaegspension) has had huge losses for the first half of 2002 due to its high exposure to the international equity market.

UK - Pension solvency levels under FRS17 are no different today than they were four years ago, accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) claims.