Europe

UK - Gartmore chairman Paul Myners is urging the pensions industry to step up pressure on the government to abolish stamp duty.

UK - Switching from equities to bonds has given the Boots pension scheme a £300m surplus, a new report shows.

ITALY - The Italian Fondo Pensione Complementare per la Famiglia (Fondo Famiglia) - the fund for students, housewives, and part time workers - has appointed four investment managers to its fledgling fund.

UK - Only 19% of the UK's top companies meet investors' highest corporate governance expectations, according to the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF).

UK - The NAPF has launched an executive share scheme assessment kit to give pension schemes and directors guidance on firms' processes of remuneration.

UK - Investment and actuarial consultant Bacon & Woodrow has pledged that it will not be following the industry trend of launching a multi-manager product.

UK - The pensions industry needs to agree on a set of standards to govern how stakeholder pension funds and products are presented if it is to stave off accusations of being misleading, according to ratings agency Standard & Poor's (S&P).

UK - Twenty UK companies "most at risk" from higher pensions costs have been named by investment bank HSBC.

UK - The UK should look to the US and Australian models which offer stakeholder-type provision for guidance, Watson Wyatt claims.

UK - Alistair Lennard denied that he had "hopped from sector to sector" in the 18-months prior to the start of the new Unilever mandate at the beginning of 1997 during his third day in the docks.