United Kingdom

UK - The Marathon Club has published a guidance note to provide trustees with practical guidelines on the implementation of a long term investment approach.

UK- Chancellor Gordon Brown survived a Conservative call for a vote of no confidence over his 1997 decision to scrap tax relief on pensions.

UK- Pensions Investment Research Consultants (PIRC) has blasted board directors for not attending meetings and called for their salaries to be cut.

UK - Independent pension adviser Ros Altmann has urged the Government to properly compensate the victims of pension scheme wind-ups.

UK - A new survey of over 650 European pension funds has revealed that property was by far the most popular alternative to equities and bonds, though the proportion of funds which invested in the asset class fell this year from 25% to 20 % in the UK....

UK - The Local Authority Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF) has demanded that BP respond after investor opposition to its remuneration report reached more than four times the normal level.

UK - The Pensions Regulator (TPR) has issued the latest module of its free online e-learning programme for trustees at www.trusteetoolkit.com

EUROPE - Euro-zone defined benefit (DB) pension plans beat their global peers in terms of increasing their projected benefit obligation (PBO) funded ratios in the last quarter of 2006, new report has claimed.

UK - A UK consortium of City of London heavyweights has exclusively told Global Pensions they are set to launch a vehicle aimed at insuring pension funds against the risk of sponsor bankruptcy.

UK - HSBC has launched Corporate Pensions Management (CPM), an administration service for its defined contribution (DC) scheme customers.