United Kingdom

UK - The Czech government has revealed plans to set up a notional defined contribution scheme for its first pillar pensions in the mould of the Swedish system.

UK - Mercer Human Resource Consulting has confirmed up to 135 redundancies within its pension administration and consulting practices.

UK - The Pension Protection Fund is likely to be postponed until 2006, experts believe.

UK - Protests by workers who lost their pension savings when their firms collapsed brought traffic in central London to a standstill on Saturday afternoon.

UK - PRUDENTIAL UK has appointed David Tildesley (pictured) as sales director - creating a new role within its business-to-business channel.

UK - Angry Equitable Life members have blamed directors, the department for trade and industry and the Financial Services Authority for the mutual's collapse.

UK - A newly published study of British high value stocks has discovered that value investment historically shows a strong performance premium, regardless of market capitalisation.

UK - Barclays Capital has launched electronic trading of UK government inflation-linked bonds through BARX, its single dealer page on Bloomberg.

UK - The number of new jobs created within the pensions and insurance sector soared during December, research from recruitment consultant Adecco reveals.

UK - Pension funds would be over £40bn richer if allocations to property were at their 1980s peak, new research shows.