Europe

UK - The £680m Devonport Royal Dockyard pension fund has sold its £30m property portfolio due to its low diversification to risk.

UK - Pension funds are being urged to call on in-depth credit analysis if they are concerned over falls in the value of their bond portfolios.

ITALY - The first wave of Italy's new pension funds have agreed management fees of as little as six basis points on fixed income mandates and 15 basis points on equity portfolios.

UK - BP's pioneering method to keep non-executives up-to-date with any problems in quoted companies should become best practice, a Morley Fund Management corporate governance expert claims.

EUROPE - EU proposals to strengthen agency workers' pay and employment rights could mean pension rights for temporary workers, lawyers warn.

UK - Lincolnshire County Council's £826m pension fund is reducing its equity weighting by 10% in favour of fixed interest, private equity and property following completion of an asset liability study by Hymans Robertson.

UK - Five men and one woman will appear in court tomorrow to face charges of conspiring to steal £2.9m from the CW Cheney pension scheme.

UK - Consultants are urging Chancellor Gordon Brown to resist making any changes which would affect pensions in his April 17 Budget.

PORTUGAL - Hewitt Associates and Bacon & Woodrow have teamed up to establish a new Retirement and Financial Management Practice (RFM) in Hewitt's Portugese office.

UK - Edinburgh Fund Managers (EFM) profits' have taken a dramatic plunge, falling from £8.6m to just £1.6m in 2001, with chairman John Wright warning that whilst the first few months of the year were encouraging, "investment and trading conditions remain...