United Kingdom

UK - Careless implementation of a new European directive could limit the investment options available to UK pension funds and potentially cost them millions of pounds through lost investment opportunities, claims Aon Consulting.

UK - AXA Investment Managers (AXA IM) has poached two senior equity specialists from ISIS and Morley as fund manager analysts (FMA). Keith Robinson joins AXA IM from ISIS Asset Management, where he spent three years as a director of UK equity fund manager...

UK - RMB International, the multi-manager of the South African FirstRand Group, has made its head of business development Jeremy Beswick (pictured) redundant.

UK - AMVESCAP has ended six months of speculation over who is to take its helm with the appointment of Martin L. Flanagan as president and CEO.

UK - The Pensions Management Institute (PMI), the body devoted to promoting professional pensions standards, has announced the members of the Trustee Panel that will advise Hon. David Blunkett MP, the pensions minister.

UK - Princeton Financial Systems, a subsidiary of State Street Corporation, has poached Alex Mitchell from London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE) as its new director of client services and implementation.   

UK - The Armed Forces Pensions Administration Agency (AFPAA) has chosen Claybrook, a UK supplier of pensions software, to provide it with a new pensions and compensation administration solution as it moves to consolidate its pension scheme arrangements....

UK - The Bank of New York has lost a £1.6bn global custody mandate with the Leicestershire County Council pension fund after the fund re-tendered the mandate and found JPMorgan to be more cost effective.

UK - With two million fewer people in defined benefit schemes in the UK than a decade ago, employers are wiping an estimated £4.15bn a year off their pension contributions bills, according to research from Brewin Dolphin Wealth Management's division...

UK- Adair Turner (pictured), chairman of the Pensions Commission, has said that an increase in retirement age is absolutely unavoidable in order to help secure the future of pensions in the UK.